Witness recalls day woman died at Valley Center compound

A woman testified Wednesday that before Patricia Hughes died in 2003 in what was thought to be an accidental drowning at a Valley Center compound, Daniel Perez told her that Hughes would die.

The woman, who was 12 at the time, said Perez gave her a false story to call into 911 the day Hughes’ body was found floating in a pool.

She said Perez told her to stay in a building by the pool. She heard a splash and what she thought was a scream, and Perez came back with wet forearms and out of breath, she testified. He told her to wait to call authorities until he could leave.

She had reasons to believe him and comply, she said. She was around 10 when she first met him, and she knew him as Lou Castro. Her mother told her he had special powers, that he was a “seer” who saw the future, that he would protect them. She didn’t know his real name was Daniel Perez and that he was a fugitive from Texas, where he had been convicted of sex crimes against children.

Roughly 10 years ago, she, her mother and her older sister moved in with him on a compound in rural Valley Center. The compound was home to a group of people who called themselves “the family,” who lived at least partly off life insurance proceeds from each other’s deaths. Hughes’ life insurance payout was $2 million.

The woman, now 20, said she always complied with Perez because she was terrified of him, that he raped and sexually abused her for years, since she was 10, at the compound. The Eagle is not naming her because authorities say she is a victim of sex crimes.

Her testimony came during the second day of a preliminary hearing for Perez, 52, to determine if there is enough evidence to take him to trial on a first-degree murder charge in the death of Hughes. Perez also is charged with dozens of other crimes, including sex crimes against children, aggravated assault and directing others to file false information for auto loans.

There is so much evidence and testimony to sift through, attorneys won’t make their final arguments on the evidence until next Thursday when the judge is expected to rule on whether the case will go to trial.

This is from the woman’s testimony:

During a conversation a week or so before Hughes’ death, Perez “told me it was Trish’s time to go and she was going to cross over.”

Hughes, a 26-year-old wife and mother of a 2-year-old, took part in the conversation. Perez said the death would be an accident, with Hughes falling into a pool on the compound. Perez said he couldn’t be there because he couldn’t be that close to someone crossing over, or angels would take him too.

Perez presented himself as a “seer,” who knew things before they happened, and he sometimes took on three different personas.

Hughes told the woman, then an upset girl, “it’s OK, it’s my time, you’ll see me later,” that she would die and come back.

On June 26, 2003, it all played out.

Perez and Hughes told her not to tell anyone about what was going to unfold.

Perez had it planned out. Others at the compound were gone or heading to an auto dealership to look at vehicles. Perez told her it was time for Hughes to pass on, but the 12-year-old was in tears because she didn’t want Hughes to die. She walked with Perez, Hughes and Hughes’ 2-year-old daughter to the pool.

The story would be that she and Hughes were vacuuming the pool.

Hughes tried to reassure her, saying, “Oh … it will be fine. Don’t worry about me … just take care of” her daughter. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

Perez told her to wait with the toddler in a shop by the pool for 20 minutes or so, that he would come get her. He told her to take the 2-year-old outside and jump in the pool with the child to make sure the toddler got wet.

While waiting in the shop, where she couldn’t see the pool, she heard a splash and thought she heard a scream. When Perez came to the shop, his forearms were wet, but not his clothes, and he seemed out of breath, as if he had been jogging. He “looked really worried and kind of sad” and “kind of flustered.”

He said to wait some time so he could get to the dealership. After she came out of the shop with Hughes’ toddler, she saw Hughes in the shallow end of the pool, face down.

She took the child into the water, got out and called 911.

Perez had directed her to tell the emergency operator that Hughes had slipped and hit her head trying to rescue her child. An autopsy would later find three blunt-force injuries to Hughes’ head, but for years it would be ruled an accidental drowning.

Not long before Hughes died, she gave her daughter a hug.

The woman said from that day when she was 12, she stuck to her story that Hughes couldn’t swim, hit her head and that she couldn’t lift Hughes out of the water.

Finally, a detective approached her last year, and she told authorities what happened.

She had decided “that I wasn’t as scared anymore. … I just had to tell the truth.”

By then, she and Perez had stopped talking.

“I realized how much he was controlling me … and I realized I didn’t want to do it anymore.”

She had met Perez when she was around 10 because he had been a customer of her mother’s in the Kansas City, Mo., area.

Her mother decided to separate and divorce her father, and she and her mother and older sister first moved to west Wichita, living with or next to Perez and his entourage.

They all ended up at what became a 20-acre compound of three houses and a pool on North Oliver, north of Kechi.

The woman said her mother said Perez “was a seer” and that he would “take care of us and she wanted to be with him.”

He claimed that he was hundreds of years old but that his body was that of a 30-year-old.

She testified that he told her, beginning around the time she was 10, that for him to survive, he needed someone pure, like a young girl. What that meant to him was oral sex.

“I was 10. I didn’t really understand what was happening. I didn’t understand it was sex.”

Once, he woke her up and introduced himself by other names - his other personalities. When he took on the different personalities, his mannerisms would change.

He said he had angels looking over him. The compound took on a name: Angel’s Landing.

It was not until she was 14 or 15, four to five years after the abuse began, that she realized what was happening to her.

But he kept telling her she was special and that he loved her. “Even though it was unpleasant, I thought that’s what I was supposed to do.”

She didn’t tell her mother. She trusted her mother, and her mother believed in Perez.

With his special powers, she thought, she couldn’t tell anyone what he was doing to her, she said. He made her think he would kill her mother, sister or grandparents if she crossed him, she testified.

When a prosecutor asked her if she had any idea how many times she had sexual intercourse with Perez from the time she was 10 until she was 14, she estimated 75 times.

Her mother died in 2008 in a traffic accident when her vehicle collided with a large truck. About a year before her mother’s death, Perez indicated that “it was Mom’s time to go.”

Her mother seemed unhappy and told her she was tired and no longer had a purpose.

A defense attorney noted that the woman, then in her junior year of high school, did “make a choice to go to Tennessee” with Perez when he and other members of the compound moved in 2009.

When asked why she didn’t talk to counselors, she said because Perez was “against counseling.”

Asked if Perez ever physically hurt her, the woman said he once held her and her sister down by their necks on a pool table and that he whispered to her, “If I wanted to, I could take you now,” and to her it meant he would kill them.

“I continued to think he had that power until well after he was arrested.”

This story was originally published May 30, 2012 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Witness recalls day woman died at Valley Center compound."