Calif. Father Found Guilty of Killing 5 of His Infant Children Over 9-Years Period: 'He Should Die in Prison,' DA Says By Kimberlee Speakman

A California man has been found guilty of killing five of his children.

Paul Allen Perez, 63, was convicted by a jury on Tuesday, Jan. 6, 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 news release from the Yolo County District Attorney’s Office.

The murders occurred between 1992 and 2001 in central and northern California, according to the DA office’s release. A breakthrough in the case occurred after one of the infant’s remains were found “weighted down and submerged in a cooler” east of Woodland, located 20 miles east of Sacramento.

Authorities were able to determine that Perez was the biological father of the infant through familial DNA, per the release.

“These crimes involved pure evil,” said Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig. “The defendant should die in prison. May the souls of his murdered children rest in peace.”

The Yolo County District Attorney’s Office did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment on the case.

The conviction came after new DNA technology helped investigators reopen a cold case from 2007, in which a deceased infant was found by a fisherman in a sealed container weighed down with “heavy objects.” The DNA technology helped identify the infant as Nikko Lee Perez.

Nikko had been wrapped in plastic and a Winnie the Pooh blanket and placed in a metal cooler that also contained pieces of metal rotors, a brick and U-shaped metal pieces, according to a coroner’s report. His cause of death was “blunt force trauma,” the report said, and Nikko was between 1 and 3 months old when he died.

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After identifying the infant in October 2019, they discovered that Nikko, who was born in Fresno in 1996, had four siblings, who were all also killed when they were less than 6 months old, according to the Yolo County Sheriff’s Office.

The siblings, all born in California, were identified as Kato Allen Perez, born in 1992, Mika Alena Perez, born in 1995; Nikko Lee Perez, born in 1997 and Kato Krow Perez, born in 2001. It was unclear whether the children had the same mother, per the sheriff’s office release.

Police announced the charges in 2020 and noted that Perez, who is also a convicted sex offender, had already been serving time at the Kern Valley State Prison for unrelated crimes.

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“The allegations announced today are heartbreaking. There is absolutely no place in our society for horrendous crimes against children,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in a statement after Perez’s charges were announced in 2020. “At the California Department of Justice, we will do everything in our power to track down criminals who think they have evaded the grip of justice.”

Perez faces life in prison without the possibility of parole. He is scheduled to be sentenced on April 6, according to the Yolo County District Attorney’s Office.