Commune leader Daniel Perez convicted of all counts; jury forewoman discusses verdict

For more than 20 years and across multiple states, Daniel Perez left a trail of manipulation and deaths, prosecutors said.

He used different names and moved with an entourage who became convinced that he held magical powers, witnesses testified.

But in the end, the man who had once held so much sway over others could not persuade a jury in Sedgwick County District Court to find him not guilty.

Perez, a slightly built 55-year-old with streaks of gray, listened as Judge Joseph Bribiesca said “guilty” 28 times Wednesday while reading the verdict against Perez.

After three to four hours of deliberation, the jury convicted Perez of all the counts he was facing, including the first-degree premeditated murder of 26-year-old Patricia Hughes in 2003. Hughes was a wife and mother and one of his followers.

Prosecutors contended he held her head underwater long enough for her to drown in a pool on a 20-acre compound where Perez and his commune had settled, on a rural stretch of North Oliver outside Wichita.

The jury forewoman, 35-year-old Theresa Curtis, told The Eagle after the verdict, “We all felt that when he went on the witness stand that he did no favors to himself.” Perez just wasn’t believable, she said.

There were so many witnesses, from different states, with different backgrounds, who didn’t know each other. Yet they told the same story about Perez, Curtis said. To her, it seemed there was no way they could have colluded.

Most of jury’s deliberation dealt with the murder charge, she said. The evidence, including life insurance taken out before Hughes’ death and the big insurance payout after her death, added up to show premeditation, she said.

The jurors felt “100 percent confident with the decisions we made,” Curtis said. They were “extremely fair,” she added.

Sentencing outlook

The breakdown of the 28 convictions: one count, first-degree murder; eight counts, rape; seven counts, aggravated criminal sodomy; three counts, aggravated assault; one count, sexual exploitation of a child; eight counts, making a false information.

Now, at his March 24 sentencing, Perez will face, at a minimum, a life sentence without parole eligibility for 25 years, District Attorney Marc Bennett said. If Perez gets the maximum, it would be more than 80 years before he would have a chance at parole, Bennett said.

Bennett, who met privately with jurors after Wednesday’s verdict to learn what went into their decision, said, “They were not impressed with his testimony.”

Perez had testified that people wrongly thought he implied that he was some magical “seer” with the ability to look into the future. He testified he wasn’t there when Hughes died, after a key witness had testified against him saying that he sexually abused her for years and had her make up a story when she was 11 that Hughes died accidentally.

But the jurors said Perez came across as contradictory, Bennett said. It was the totality of evidence against Perez that mattered, according to the jurors, Bennett said.

Alice Osburn, Perez’s court-appointed defense attorney, had told jurors that prosecutors hadn’t presented the evidence necessary to convict. She contended that Perez was only a member, not the leader, of the compound in the 9500 block of North Oliver called Angels Landing. Osburn couldn’t be reached for comment on the verdict.

National attention

It is the kind of case – and the kind of plot – that could be the subject of a book or movie.

One of the national television networks had a journalist in the courtroom for the trial. The case has drawn interest from media organizations across the nation, Bennett said.

Witnesses testified that over the years, Perez and his followers moved from south Texas to the Dakotas to the Kansas City, Mo., area to just north of Wichita and finally to Tennessee. Along the way, five of his followers died – in a plane crash and under a collapsing car, both in South Dakota, and in a traffic collision in Butler County – resulting in millions of dollars of life insurance payouts to Perez and others in the group.

Perez has not been charged in the other deaths.

When a reporter on Wednesday asked Bennett what had happened with all of the assets that the group had accumulated, Bennett said that they “blew through it,” according to testimony. Some of the money apparently went to buy expensive sports cars, high-end SUVs and large remote-control airplanes that Perez was obsessed with.

The life insurance payout on Hughes’ death, initially thought to be an accident, exceeded $1 million.

Prosecutors had accused Perez of manipulating his followers by convincing them that he had magical powers, including the ability to see into the future; of sexually abusing some of their young daughters; and of ordering them to falsify car credit and life insurance applications so he could live lavishly.

After the verdict, when prosecutors met with the jurors, “their question to us is, ‘How are the girls doing?’” said Chief Deputy District Attorney Kim Parker, referring to the victims.

“He took advantage of these people at every opportunity,” Parker said.

Long investigation

Perez originally was being tried on 37 counts, but the state dismissed or combined some of the charges after testimony ended last week.

One of the remaining charges – sexual exploitation of a child – carries a prison sentence of life without parole eligibility for 25 years, Bennett said after jurors began deliberating Tuesday afternoon. The charge is based on a videotape showing an 8-year-old girl changing in a bathroom, made at Perez’s direction.

In Bennett’s interview with reporters after the verdict, he first said he wanted to credit the case investigators — sheriff’s Detective Ron Goodwyn, retired Wichita police Detective Clint Snyder and John Sullivan, a senior special agent with the FBI. Together, they were involved in a nine-year investigation that built the case against Perez.

“This is their work,” Bennett said.

A crucial breakthrough in the investigation occurred when a young woman, who was the 11-year-old involved in the case, came forward with what happened to her, Bennett said.

Without her, Bennett said, “there’d be no murder case. It’s just as simple as that.”

This story was originally published February 18, 2015 at 11:08 AM with the headline "Commune leader Daniel Perez convicted of all counts; jury forewoman discusses verdict."