Attorneys present opening statements in Valley Center commune murder case

Attorneys in the first-degree murder and sex crimes trial of Valley Center commune leader Daniel Perez told jurors Wednesday that they would see different sides of the man who allegedly lived off of life insurance proceeds and had sex with young females.

Kim Parker, Sedgwick County’s chief deputy district attorney, characterized Perez in her opening statements as a manipulative, sometimes violent man who had a sexual “appetite for children” and persuaded his followers to take out life insurance policies, then staged their deaths so he could enjoy a lavish lifestyle free of scrutiny.

There were “multiple instances of sexual violence, multiple instances of physical violence,” of domination and of control during the 15 years after he fled sentencing in a Texas sex crimes case and used false names to avoid capture, she told jurors.

“He told young girls he needed them to keep him alive,” Parker said.

With the life insurance proceeds – never paid out in his own name – Perez, 55, enjoyed expensive homes, cars and trinkets, such as remote-control airplanes, she said. He used at least two aliases, including the name Lou Castro.

“This is a case that will take a while,” Parker told jurors.

“I will give you a lay of the land, but the real accounting will come from the witness stand, from the mouths” of those involved, she said.

In contrast, defense attorney Alice Osburn described her client as welcoming and a friend to the community who lived on his 20-acre compound known as Angels Landing.

His house, in the 9500 block of North Oliver, was “an open home to friends and police,” Osburn told jurors.

Perez once donated nearly $20,000 to the city of Kechi to buy a police vehicle. One woman who lived on the property “dated police officers,” Osburn said.

She said Perez enjoyed sexual relationships with young women but only with those who were willing and of legal age. No sexual abuse occurred, she said.

“Adults were always around the children. People were everywhere” at Angels Landing, Osburn said. “People could come and go” and were “free to do what they wanted.”

“He wasn’t hiding from anyone.”

Perez is facing trial this week on more than 30 criminal counts, including first-degree premeditated murder in the death of 26-year-old Patricia Hughes, whose drowning in the compound’s pool on June 26, 2003, was initially ruled accidental.

It was reclassified as a homicide in 2011 after a Sedgwick County sheriff’s investigator, who had watched the Angels Landing group for years, talked to a woman who says she helped stage Hughes’ death.

Perez also faces charges of rape, sodomy, sexual exploitation of a child, aggravated assault, criminal threat and directing that false information be put on life insurance and car credit applications. All are associated with the communal lifestyle he led in Kansas and other states with a group who lived off of life insurance proceeds from the deaths of other commune members.

Perez has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

The trial, which is expected to last more than a week, got underway Wednesday morning after two days of jury selection.

In addition to opening statements, jurors heard testimony from former Sedgwick County coroner Mary Dudley, who performed Hughes’ autopsy; two paramedics and a Sedgwick County sheriff’s deputy who were dispatched to the scene of the drowning; and Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Detective Ronald Goodwyn, who started investigating Perez and the Angels Landing group around the time of the 2003 drowning.

Goodwyn’s testimony will resume Thursday. Jurors were ordered to return to court by 9 a.m.

In the coming days, jurors are expected to hear testimony from life insurance agents who handled Perez’s followers’ policies, as well as women who say they were sexually molested and raped by Perez.

District Judge Joseph Bribiesca is presiding over the case.

Perez jotted down notes and appeared engaged during Wednesday’s opening statements and testimony, watching witnesses and eyeing jurors. He wore a charcoal-colored suit jacket, khaki pants, an orange-striped tie and eyeglasses.

His graying hair – longer than shoulder length during his 2012 prelminary hearing – was cut short.

Parker, the prosecutor, in her opening statements said that, like the others who lived with Perez, Hughes and the young girl he enlisted to help stage her death believed he was a “seer” who could foretell the future.

He told them he was either younger or older than 55, Parker said – “like an angel who had special powers.”

The girl “was asked to sit with Patricia and Lou (an alias Perez used) at a dining room table, and they told her it was Patricia’s time to go because she was no longer useful and because she had a $2 million life insurance policy,” Parker told the jury.

The girl later told authorities that Hughes had slipped and hit her head while rushing into the compound’s pool to rescue her young daughter and that Hughes was too heavy to be pulled out.

The toddler, the girl told authorities, fell in while the group was vacuuming the pool.

The girl “had already been under his manipulation and control for two years,” including suffering repeated rapes by Perez, Parker said.

“But Patricia told her it was all right, because she would come back” to life.

Osburn, the defense attorney, denied the prosecution’s contention that Perez would hurt, let alone murder, Hughes. The two met in 1995 when Hughes was 19.

Osburn said that a coroner ruled Hughes’ death as accidental in 2003 and that Perez was at a car dealership when he received a phone call about her drowning.

Perez “didn’t kill Patricia. Patricia was the matriarch of this group,” Osburn said, referring to the communal family Perez led.

“She was the one that got it started. She befriended the women. She was the catalyst of everything.”

Osburn also dismissed claims that Perez directed his followers to falsify life insurance and car credit applications, saying Perez got blamed when the other members of Angels Landing came under investigation.

She also said none of the females he had sex with were forced or raped.

“You may not approve of the lifestyle, but this was an open relationship with young women of consenting age.”

This story was originally published February 4, 2015 at 1:27 PM with the headline "Attorneys present opening statements in Valley Center commune murder case."