Defendant’s conduct left others suspicious
People now know his real name is Daniel U. Perez.
His neighbors and acquaintances now know that Perez is a 52-year-old fugitive who fled after being convicted of sex crimes against a child in Texas in the 1990s.
Perez made his first appearance Thursday in Sedgwick County District Court on charges that he murdered a Valley Center woman in 2003, whose death had been classified as an accidental drowning. Prosecutors also charged him with multiple sex crimes against children from 2002 to 2009.
But his Valley Center neighbors and others had already grown suspicious. About a dozen people associated with Perez and some of his friends had died in accidents. Some of his associates were receiving large life insurance sums because of the deaths.
George Knapple and others in the Wichita-area radio-control-plane community knew Perez as Lou. For years, Perez had used the alias Lou Castro.
Knapple had a unique perspective: Lou had a big thing for radio-control airplanes, and beginning four to five years ago, Lou became one of Knapple’s regular customers at The Hangar on West Street in Wichita. At first, Lou bought a few trainer planes from Knapple.
“Then he started spending money like a drunken sailor … tearing the hell out of them … and then buying some more … he spent a ton of money on those things,” Knapple said.
Each time Lou came into the store, he had “this entourage” with him, Knapple said.
The entourage, which sometimes numbered up to four people besides Lou, included a group of young-looking women. There was a petite, attractive, fashionably dressed blonde, whom Lou referred to as his wife. There was another young woman, maybe a teenager, whose clothing and hair seemed scroungy to Knapple, and whom Lou called “baby girl.”
‘Angel’s Landing’
About two years ago, before Lou moved to Tennessee, Knapple visited the big home where Lou lived with the blonde. It was among a cluster of three houses and a large pool house on a rural section in the 9500 block of North Oliver in Valley Center. Lou’s house, built in 2005 and now appraised at $229,000, covers nearly 3,400 square feet and sits on almost 5 acres at the rear of the cluster of houses – what neighbors came to view as a compound when Lou lived there because the residents seemed to be associated with each other. The house has since sold.
Knapple noticed that Lou’s home had no personal items – no knickknacks, pictures, grandma’s quilts. It seemed like a show home or upscale hotel, with expensive, new furniture and appliances.
Knapple never saw Lou drive the same car twice. Lou drove fancy SUVs and sometimes a Corvette. The vehicles had vanity plates: Angel 1, Angel 2, Angel 3 …
By the parking area outside Lou’s house, someone wrote in the concrete in big letters: “Angel’s Landing” and in small cursive letters, “Lou,” along with two females’ names.
“Angel’s Landing” apparently referred to a grassy airstrip Lou graded and maintained behind his house, to land his expensive toys.
When Lou and his entourage visited the store, the young women always paid, using different credit cards with different names.
Lou never pulled out a wallet. Every time Lou came to the store, Knapple had to get Lou a Coke out of the store machine because Lou didn’t have 50 cents on him.
“So I knew that whole thing was strange … no one ever knew where his money came from,” Knapple said. And because of the strangeness, people in the remote-control community became suspicious.
“What he told everybody is that he was an Indian, South Dakota Indian … a Sioux Indian. He played that up and in fact every once in a while wore Indian jewelry.”
He had long, black hair, and to Knapple he looked like an American Indian.
He told Knapple and others that his relatives died in a plane crash and that he got a lot of money from it.
He told Knapple that his business and source of income was cattle, that he bought and sold cattle, sometimes to the government, and that he had cattle in the Dakotas and in Texas.
Knapple didn’t believe Lou was a cattleman. To Knapple, who grew up on a farm, Lou didn’t seem to have the farming sense and business sense needed for such an enterprise.
Lou and his entourage lived on fast food, as far as Knapple could tell.
When they stopped at the store, Lou would send one of “the girls,” as he called them, to Church’s or Popeyes to get chicken. At Lou’s house, Knapple noticed fast-food wrappers everywhere but no sign that food was ever cooked there.
Beside the house is a sprawling pool house/game room with a large indoor swimming pool. In an adjacent 2,000-square-foot room, Lou kept his planes, motorcycles, a giant-screen TV and couches.
“It was a giant man cave out there,” Knapple said.
Lou said there had been a big pool party where a bunch of cheerleaders swam naked.
To Knapple, Lou was a braggart.
He said he had five Corvettes that were anniversary or special models.
Lou said once that a close friend had drowned but didn’t give details.
“You could never pin him on details” about anything, Knapple said.
Lou leaves town
On Thursday, in Sedgwick County District Court, Perez, AKA Lou, was charged with first-degree murder in the June 2006 death of Patricia Hughes, 26, who lived in one of the houses on the tract off of North Oliver with her 2-year-old daughter. For years, the death had been classified as an accidental drowning in a pool on the property.
Lou and the blonde told Knapple they were trying to get custody of a young girl whose mother had died and that they were in a custody fight with the girl’s grandparents. Later, Lou told Knapple that they had finally gotten custody of the girl.
Knapple said he thought to himself, “That’s weird; no judge in his right mind would do that.”
Sometimes, different men would be in the group that traveled with Lou to Knapple’s store. One was a carpenter who ran a small operation. Another was a large man who did odd jobs and ran errands for Lou.
Eventually, Lou told Knapple he was moving to Nashville, that he loved the climate there.
Lou left town owing Knapple about $700 for plane equipment. Months later, the big man came into the shop and paid Lou’s bill with a credit card.
Most guys had planes that cost $300 to $1,500, but Lou had moved up to mail-order planes from Europe that had 10- to 15-foot wingspans and five-cylinder engines, costing $15,000 or more, Knapple said.
Later, one of the women in Lou’s entourage was trying to sell his planes on the Internet, according to Knapple.
Charges become public
After Lou moved away, rumors spread in the remote-control community that he was in jail, that the IRS was involved.
In fact, Lou – real name, Daniel Perez – was in trouble. By late 2010, he had pleaded guilty in federal court to identity theft and was facing a two-year sentence. Records show that he and his wife had moved from Valley Center to Columbia, Tenn., near Nashville.
Perez had become a subject of an investigation by a federal task force that included a Sedgwick County sheriff’s detective. Authorities won’t disclose the nature of the federal investigation. But a source said it led to evidence that Hughes’ 2003 death wasn’t an accidental drowning.
Behind the scenes, by Sept. 1, 2011, investigators had classified Hughes’ death as a homicide. The next day, Sept. 2, the murder charge and sex-crime charges against Perez were filed under a seal in Sedgwick County. The charges didn’t become public until Thursday, when he appeared in court via video monitor and stood in an orange jumpsuit, without comment or expression. He looked tired.
In an affidavit he filled out to apply for a court-appointed defense attorney in the murder and sex-crimes cases, Perez said he had been unemployed for three years and had been in a federal prison in Oklahoma. He wrote that he had one dependent, a daughter, and that he was separated or divorced.
Before the charges became public, Knapple also heard through the grapevine that someone was looking into murder charges against Lou.
It was widely known that Lou had been associated with a number of people who had died in accidents.
When Knapple heard that Lou was being suspected of murder, he thought to himself, “It makes total sense.”
This story was originally published January 22, 2012 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Defendant’s conduct left others suspicious ."