Woman’s death now considered homicide
Eight years after an investigation found that a 26-year-old Valley Center woman died accidentally in a swimming pool, her death has been reclassified as a homicide, and a man is facing charges in her death.
An arrest warrant has been issued for Daniel U. Perez, 52. The warrant says that he is charged with first-degree, premeditated murder and sexual exploitation of a child. Sheriff’s officials won’t discuss the charges and say they are limited in what they can say about Patricia Hughes’ death in 2003.
But part of the story emerges through separate court documents.
Hughes’ parents went to court in 2010 to get guardianship of Hughes’ daughter, who was 2 when her mother died. They contended that Hughes’ death was one of about a dozen deaths that had something in common: The people who died had been associated with Perez, the man now charged in her death, or two other people, court documents say. The documents also say that Perez used an alias of Lou Castro.
“There is a pattern that members of a group associated with the person using the name of Lou Castro have followed of insuring members of the group and then living off the proceeds of the life insurance policies when one of them dies,” the grandparents’ attorney said in a July 2010 document in the guardianship case. The document goes on to say, “Lou Castro is in fact Daniel U. Perez.”
Hughes’ parents contended that their granddaughter was in “imminent danger” and that she would be at risk if she remained in the care of a woman living with Perez. Hughes’ parents said in their filing that they had learned that there was a life insurance policy on minors in the household. Although no life insurance policy was found for the girl, other children in the household apparently had such policies, said Martin Bauer, the grandparents’ attorney, in an affidavit.
Three people caring for the granddaughter are dead. Hughes died in 2003 in what was then classified as an accidental drowning. Her husband, Brian Hughes, died in March 2006, apparently in an accident in which a jack failed while he was changing a tire in South Dakota. Brian Hughes left care of his daughter to Jennifer Hutson — a Valley Center woman. Hutson died in a traffic accident in 2008.
The girl then went to live with another guardian in Valley Center who is associated with Perez.
Bauer said Tuesday that “there were suspicions” at the time of Brian Hughes’ death, “so we were very glad that we were able in 2010 to place” the Hughes girl “in a safe place.” She is 11 now and lives out of Kansas with family, he said.
“We were very happy that we were able to get this young child in the care of family and not in the place where suspicious deaths were happening,” he said.
As for Patricia Hughes’ surviving family and the reclassification of homicide, Bauer said, “It’s very unfortunate that they have to relive this again … the death and what really happened.”
The case, which was reclassified as a homicide on Sept. 1, 2011, involved hard work from “a very passionate detective” with the Sheriff’s Office, said Sheriff’s Capt. Greg Pollock.
At the time of Patricia Hughes’ death on June 26, 2003, a sheriff’s official said she was trying to rescue her 2-year-old daughter in a pool in the 9500 block of North Oliver and apparently slipped while hurrying down pool steps. Hughes reportedly didn’t know how to swim.
An 11-year-old neighbor, who ended up saving the 2-year-old, said it looked like Hughes had hit her head, the official said, according to an Eagle article published the day after the incident. Paramedics and firefighters found Hughes face down in the water and with a head injury.
Around 2009 or 2010, a sheriff’s detective was assigned to a federal task force in an investigation not related to Hughes’ death. Investigators came upon evidence that Hughes’ death might be a homicide, and prosecutors agreed, according to a source familiar with the investigation.
Pollock said Tuesday that he couldn’t discuss the charges against the suspect in Hughes’ death and declined to disclose his name. The man has been in federal custody in another state and is expected to be transferred to Kansas this week, Pollock said.
Perez had been convicted in Texas of multiple counts of felony indecency with a child-sexual contact, said an affidavit filed in Sedgwick County District Court. Perez fled before sentencing in the Texas case, court documents say. By 2010, he was living in Tennessee. Around November 2010, he pleaded guilty in federal court in Kansas to aggravated identity theft and was facing a two-year sentence, documents show.
This story was originally published January 17, 2012 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Woman’s death now considered homicide."