Thomas Perez Jr. Falsely Confessed to His Father's Murder After a 17 Hour Interrogation — but His Dad Was Alive the Whole Time. Inside the Disturbing Case By Caroline Blair

Thomas Perez Jr. was brutally interrogated by police officers for 17 hours before he falsely confessed to murdering his father, Thomas Perez Sr. Their story was told on the Dec. 5 episode of Dateline.

In August 2018, Perez Jr. called police about his father after he went for a walk with the dog and didn’t return to their home in Fontana, Calif., per the Orange County Register. Police subsequently brought in Perez Jr. and began their hours-long questioning about the disappearance of his father.

Officers believed that Perez Jr. murdered his father, so they tried to get a confession by using a variety of methods — including lying to him about finding his dad’s body and telling him his dog was about to be put down, per court records obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

Around 16 hours into their interrogation, Perez Jr. broke down and apologized to his dad and his sister, which the police considered a confession. However, everything suddenly changed when officers discovered that Perez Sr. had been alive the entire time. They found him awaiting a flight at the Los Angeles International Airport.

Despite learning the new information, the police still waited to tell Perez Jr. and placed him on a psychiatric hold. Shortly after the father and son were reunited, Perez Jr. filed a federal lawsuit against the city of Fontana for mistreatment during the interrogation. In 2024, the city agreed to settle the case and pay him nearly $900,000.

Perez Jr. has since spoken about the traumatizing ordeal and appeared on the Dec. 5 episode of Dateline, which airs Fridays at 9 or 10 p.m. ET.

Here’s everything to know about Thomas Perez Jr.’s 17-hour interrogation and why he falsely confessed to the murder of his father.

Thomas Perez Sr. was believed to be missing in August 2018

On Aug. 7, 2018, Perez Sr., who was 71 at the time, took his dog, Margo, for a short walk to check the mailbox down the street. Just a few minutes later, Margo returned, but Perez Sr. was not with her.

Perez Jr., who was living with his dad in Fontana, didn’t initially think anything of it because they were friendly with all the neighbors. However, when Perez Sr. was still not home the following afternoon, Perez Jr. called the local non-emergency police line to ask if someone had seen his father.

“I just want to know that if there’s an elderly man walking in the neighborhood or sometimes he maybe got disoriented … let me know, it may be my father. That’s it,” he said, according to CNN.

When two community service officers went to check on Perez Jr., they claimed they noticed disarray in the house and were confused about some of Perez Sr.’s possessions being clumped together in piles. The officers followed up with the Fontana Police Department, who came to talk with Perez Jr., and then subsequently asked him to answer more questions at the police station.

Thomas Perez Jr. became the prime suspect

When officers initially began asking Perez Jr. about his missing dad, he recalled that they were asking reasonable questions and hadn’t immediately thought of him as a suspect, he alleged in court documents obtained by CNN.

Around 24 hours after his father disappeared, officers obtained a search warrant for the Perez home. The tone began to shift after police allegedly uncovered Perez Sr.’s wallet and cell phone at the house, as well as supposed bloodstains, per CBS News.

They took photographs of the home and brought in a cadaver dog, who allegedly alerted them to the scent of possible human remains in a bedroom. Police began to think of Perez Jr. as a suspect more than a concerned son, and the interrogation turned intense quickly.

Investigators, including Detective Robert Miller, began questioning Perez Jr. the night of Aug. 8 and interrogated him into the early hours of the next morning on Aug. 9, making it the second night in a row that Perez Jr. had little to no sleep, according to ABC.

Around 5 a.m. on Aug. 9, they took a DNA swab from Perez Jr. and noted that although he was not under arrest, he was a primary suspect. Detectives David Janusz and Kyle Guthrie took over the interrogation later that morning and drove him around town for hours. They brought him to a coffee shop, a donation box where they alleged his father’s clothes had been taken and construction sites where he could’ve buried his father’s body.

“All they did was have me out in dirt fields today looking for bodies … they got me all brainwashed,” Perez Jr. later said to officers back at the station, per CNN. “‘Where is dad, where’s dad, where’s dad?’ ”

When they weren’t bringing him to possible burial sites, the detectives continued questioning Perez Jr. in the car and insinuated that being under the influence of medication could have caused him to murder his father, according to US District Judge Dolly Gee, who reviewed the footage.

Perez Jr. later asked to seek medical attention, but the officers allegedly denied his request (the city of Fontana later denied this claim). Throughout the entire ordeal, officers lied to Perez Jr. and told him that his father had died. While it is legal for officers to lie during interrogations, they cannot intentionally deceive to elicit a confession, per Zickerman Law.

The interrogation continued for 17 hours

The detectives returned Perez Jr. to the interrogation room, and he asked to see his friend and business partner, Carl Peraza. The police allowed the visit but also tried to get Peraza to turn on his friend and get him to confess, Peraza testified in a 2023 deposition.

“The officers indicated that what they needed me to do most was try to get an exact location of where Tom not only buried his father, but also to confess that he murdered his father,” Peraza alleged.

He told Perez Jr. what the police had told him about alleged evidence, but this only made them both more confused.

Janusz and Guthrie continued interrogating Perez Jr. for several more hours on Aug. 9 and allegedly threatened him, saying he could be financially liable if he were lying. They also pulled on his heartstrings by bringing in their family dog and alleging that she could be euthanized if she ended up a stray and he didn’t confess.

“It did happen. It did happen. You killed him, and he’s dead,” Guthrie told Perez Jr., in video footage of the interrogation, per CNN. “You know you killed him … You’re not being honest with yourself … 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? Look at your dog. She knows, because she was walking through all the blood.”

Perez Jr. continued maintaining that he did not hurt his father, but he was stressed and sleep-deprived that he began ripping out his hair, pulling off his shirt and hysterically crying.

“I no longer could see in color,” he recalled to CNN in 2024. “I was seeing everybody in black and white and then I felt physical pain, like an electric shock, and it went from head to toe.”

He added, “I was still hanging on, dealing with that loss until they told me they’re going to kill my dog too.”

Thomas Perez Jr. falsely confessed to killing his father

After 17 hours of interrogation and more than 36 hours after Perez Jr. reported his dad missing, he apologized to his dad, which the police considered a confession.

“I’m sorry dad,” he said, per CNN. “I had no idea. I love you.”

He spoke directly to his sister and told her, “I didn’t mean to take your daddy away. I have no idea. I still don’t understand.”

Police determined that his apologies, in addition to his mixed responses over the last several hours, added up to a confession. They continued asking him questions about what happened, but Perez Jr. threw up in a trash can instead and didn’t know what to say.

After he was left alone in the room, Perez Jr. claimed that he tried to die by suicide.

“He was sleep deprived, mentally ill and significantly undergoing symptoms of withdrawal from his psychiatric medications,” U.S. District Court Judge Gee later wrote. “A reasonable juror could conclude that the detectives inflicted unconstitutional psychological torture on Perez. Their tactics indisputably led to Perez’s subjective confusion and disorientation, to the point he falsely confessed to killing his father, and tried to take his own life.”

Thomas Perez Sr. was alive the entire time and waiting for a flight at the airport

In the late evening of Aug. 9, the police had placed Perez Jr. in a hospital psychiatric unit for further evaluation. He reportedly stayed there for three days before he learned the shocking truth — his father was alive and well and police had known about it for days.

Earlier on Aug. 9, Perez Sr.’s daughter called police to let them know that the missing man was her father and that he was waiting for his flight at the Los Angeles International Airport to visit her. They brought Perez Sr. to the station, where they explained the case.

Perez Sr. claimed that he went to visit his brother and a friend and had forgotten his phone at home. Despite Perez Sr. being well and alive, he was still interrogated about his relationship with his son and whether his son was ever violent towards him.

For several days, Perez Sr. was allegedly not allowed to see his son, and reportedly, nobody was permitted to tell Perez Jr. that his dad was alive.

“They left me in that mental anguish and to just suffer continually and then they put the block on the phone so that I can’t receive the calls,” Perez Jr. later told CNN. “I suffered that way for three days.”

Perez Sr. was eventually allowed to call his son, and Perez Jr. “just dropped to the floor crying,” he recalled. Perez Jr. was released from the hospital later that day and reunited with his father.

“When he saw me, he just stared at me and he said, ‘Dad, is that really you?’ ” Perez Sr. said. “And I said, ‘Yes, it’s me,’ and he goes, ‘They told me you were dead.’ And I said, ‘No, no I’m here.’ And then he walked slowly to me… and then we embraced, and we had tears in our eyes.”

Thomas Perez Jr. filed a federal lawsuit for mistreatment and was awarded nearly $900,000

Around one year after the ordeal took place, Perez Jr. filed a lawsuit against the city of Fontana. He alleged that police psychologically tortured him and coerced him into giving a false confession, per the filing obtained by the Orange County Register.

Five years later, he settled with the City of Fontana for $898,000. Despite reaching an agreement, the city of Fontana has denied breaking any laws while interrogating him.

“The settlement specifically included no finding of wrongdoing, nor any violation of state or federal law,” the city attorney, Ruben Duran, told CNN at the time.

Guthrie, who was also named in the lawsuit, defended his questioning and said in a deposition, “I don’t think that what we told him would cause him emotional distress because as you can see in this interview, he’s not even upset. He didn’t even react to the fact that we made an assumption that his father was not living anymore.” The officer, who has since been promoted to sergeant, later said he had not watched the interrogation tape and only saw clips at the deposition.

Guthrie also called their line of questioning “a ruse” and said he didn’t believe that it was “the reason why [Perez Jr.] admitted to killing his father.”

Thomas Perez Jr. called the ordeal “painful” in a Dateline interview

Perez Jr. was interviewed for the Dec. 5 episode of Dateline, which was aptly titled “The Ruse.”

When interviewer Lester Holt asked him what it was like to hear police tell him that his father had died, Perez Jr. simply replied, “Heart suck. Shock.”

He also spoke about the intense interrogation and admitted that he wanted the entire thing to “stop” because it was so “painful.” However, he also clarified his alleged confession and told Holt, “I didn’t say, ‘Yeah I killed him. I didn’t say that.’ ”

Prior to his most recent interview, both Perez Jr. and Perez Sr. spoke to CNN about the trauma they endured in the 2018 interrogation.

“I got to a point where I was afraid to even go get the mail anymore,” Perez Jr. said. “I was afraid to come out. I said I don’t know who might be there.”

Meanwhile, Perez Sr. said that he “helped” his son “get through” the traumatic ordeal.