Daniel Perez testifies beating, memory loss led him to Lou Castro identity

Daniel Perez, testifying in his own defense Thursday, offered explanations ranging from amnesia to misinterpretations in an attempt to debunk the numerous accusations, including murder and child sex crimes, for which he is charged.

In answer to why he assumed the alias Lou Castro – a name that he carried until his 2010 arrest on federal charges – the 55-year-old Perez told jurors he suffered memory loss after he was severely beaten by a group of uniformed men before he was scheduled for sentencing in a Texas child sex crimes case in 1997. When he awoke, severely injured and medicated, he said, a woman he recognized was calling him Lou Castro.

He claimed that in the early years after leaving Texas, he bought fancy vehicles and maintained a lavish lifestyle with cash he carried in a red duffel bag. Patricia Hughes, he said, gave him the bag after he lost his memory. The money, he explained, likely came from the sale of a home and cars in the life he couldn’t recall.

He told jurors scar tissue from a penile injury he suffered in the 1990s left him able to have sex only with a partner’s cooperation – not forcefully as was alleged from numerous witnesses in testimony.

He suggested the term “seer” was merely a turn of phrase rather than a claim he could foretell the future, and he said when he referred to himself as “special” it was a reference to “special education.”

Asked whether he told one of his followers she would be reincarnated, Perez said: “No. We watched a lot of movies.”

Perez took the witness stand for more than four hours Thursday on the seventh day of testimony in a trial that took three years to bring before a jury. He is charged with 37 counts, including the premeditated murder of Hughes, a 26-year-old wife and mother whose 2003 drowning death was for years considered accidental.

In earlier testimony, a 23-year-old woman said she was coerced at age 11 to help stage Hughes’ drowning after Perez foretold Hughes’ death. She called 911 that day and told authorities Hughes had slipped and knocked herself unconscious while trying to rescue her toddler daughter from the pool, but years later told investigators that she had recited a story prepared by Perez.

Perez is also facing charges of rape, sodomy, criminal threat, sexual exploitation of a child and directing that car loan and life insurance applications be falsified connected to a period of time he lived in and around Wichita, specifically at a 20-acre property known as Angels Landing in the 9500 block of North Oliver.

Prosecutors say Perez used false names, including Lou Castro, and moved from state to state to avoid facing the consequences of his Texas convictions and to feed his sexual appetite for young girls. He funded a lavish lifestyle with huge life insurance payouts from the deaths of his followers without coming under scrutiny. They say he decided who would take out the policies, the amounts and who would be the beneficiaries, but he was never a beneficiary himself.

Several of his surviving followers have testified throughout the trial that Perez claimed he was a centuries-old seer who could foretell the future and whose body would be inhabited by angels. According to testimony, he needed to have sex with young girls to stay alive.

Perez’s defense attorney says his followers pushed the blame for the falsified documents and other crimes onto Perez after authorities began investigating the group.

Perez was arrested in 2010 on federal charges after relocating to Tennessee. He was charged in the local case in 2012.

Following six days of witness testimony, prosecutors on Thursday morning rested their case. The defense rested later in the day, after jurors heard testimony from four people, including Perez.

Jurors were ordered to return to court Tuesday morning for the reading of juror instructions and for closing arguments. District Judge Joseph Bribiesca is presiding over the case.

Claim of memory loss

Perez told jurors on Thursday that while he was on his way to address a plea agreement in the 1997 Texas child sex crimes case he suffered the attack that prompted the memory loss.

“I was beaten close to death,” Perez said.

He said after he awoke, he saw Patricia Gomez – later known as Patricia Hughes – a friend and former lover that he met while dancing in Beeville, Texas. She had taken him to either Brownsville, Texas, or to Mexico to recover, he said.

“I didn’t recollect anything at that time, but I knew that I knew her,” Perez said.

Though she knew him by his given name, Hughes only called him Lou Castro from that point forward, Perez said. She helped him relocate to Corpus Christi then moved with him from state to state, inviting her friends and acquaintances to join them until her death on June 26, 2003, he testified.

In testimony drawn out by defense attorney Alice Osburn, Perez said he and Hughes followed another woman, Mona Griffith, to South Dakota. After Griffith, her 12-year-old daughter and her boyfriend died in a plane crash, Perez said he and his entourage moved to Lee’s Summit, Mo., to be close to Griffith’s family.

When the group moved to Wichita in 2001, it again was because of Hughes, he testified.

Perez characterized his relationship with most of the women who lived with him as “not like a father figure;” they were akin to friendships.

“Like a big brother,” he said.

The women that he did have sex with were willing and of consenting age, he testified – not raped and underage as alleged in previous testimony.

He testified that he shared a bedroom with an 11-year-old girl at Angels Landing but that they did not share a bed. Later, when she was older, he had sex with her, but it was at her bidding, he said.

In a quick exchange with Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett, Perez said he funded his own lifestyle. He admitted he worked no job, instead saying he spent six years building Angels Landing.

He said the women in his life controlled the finances, bought the real estate and initiated buying the life insurance policies. He denied asking anyone to falsify information on applications.

With regard to buying expensive cars, Perez testified his role was to scope out the vehicles and “find the best deal” but that he didn’t own any or know where the money for them came from.

Asked about his whereabouts when Hughes died, he said he was at a west Wichita car dealership searching for another vehicle. He testified he was there for 30 minutes before receiving a frantic phone call from a neighbor telling him of emergency vehicles at Angels Landing. He denied any plan existed to kill Hughes to collect $1.24 million in life insurance benefits from her death.

He said the 11-year-old girl who called 911 and Hughes’ toddler did, in fact, see him with wet skin and out of breath after Hughes died, as alleged in previous testimony.

But, he said, the incident happened the day after, not moments after, Hughes’ drowning like the girl claimed.

This story was originally published February 12, 2015 at 4:07 PM with the headline "Daniel Perez testifies beating, memory loss led him to Lou Castro identity."