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Status:
Sentenced to
life in prison without the possibility of parole on November 29,
2006
Alleged Serial Killer arrested for two 1980s Murders
October 18, 2005
San
Jose police today announced the arrest of an alleged serial killer in
connection with at least two murders in San Jose from the 1980s.
Luis
Perez, 40, was arrested at Mule Creek State Prison on Monday for the
1989 murder of San Jose resident Nestora McCune, 61, and the 1984
Sunnyvale murder of San Jose resident Florence Ruth Berrospe, 50.
Investigators also have linked him to an unsolved murder in San
Francisco and charges are pending in that case.
Santa
Clara County Chief Assistant District Attorney Karyn Sinunu said that
authorities believe Perez may have committed additional murders in the
Bay Area between 1983 and 1999 when he began his prison sentence.
"We
think there may be more victims but it would be irresponsible of me to
estimate the number,'' Sinunu said.
Perez
was convicted of the sexual assault and attempted murder of a
14-year-old girl in San Francisco in 1999, according to court documents.
McCune also had evidence of being sexually assaulted, according to
investigators.
Anyone with information about this case should call San Jose Police Sgts.
Rob Millard or Tim Porter at (408) 277-5283. Those wishing to remain
anonymous can call Crime Stoppers at (408) 947-STOP.
San Jose Police May Have Caught Serial Killer
October 19, 2005
San Jose police say they
may have caught a serial killer after new technology linked a Bay Area
inmate to three unsolved murder cases.
Police say DNA evidence
has linked 40-year-old San Francisco resident Luis Perez to the 1984
murder of Florence Ruth Berrospe. She was strangled, and her body found
in Sunnyvale in a ditch near Highway 237.
Police say Perez is also charged with the murder of Nestora. Her
partially-clothed body was discovered on the side of Highway 101 in San
Jose in June of 1989.
And
police believe he's responsible for the 1996 murder of a San Francisco
prostitute. They have not released her identity.
Investigators believe
Perez may have committed other murders.
Karyn
Sinunu, Santa Clara County district attorney office: "We know that they
are working a case up there, but there are other things locally that we
are looking at. We are looking outside the state also."
Perez
is currently being held at the Santa Clara County jail. He had been
serving time for an unrelated case at the Mule Creek State Prison in
Sacramento. He was convicted of sexually assaulting and attempting to
murder a 14-year-old San Francisco girl.
Perez
worked as a handyman and lived in both San Jose and San Francisco.
Police: Inmate is serial killer
October 20, 2005
Luis
Aguilar Perez preyed on "discarded women,'' troubled people that
society and sometimes their families forgot, prosecutors say.
He is
the first suspected serial killer to be identified in Santa Clara
County, and authorities said they expect the case to mushroom from the
three victims they have identified so far.
"It
has the potential to be one of the largest cases we've ever had,'' said
San Jose police detective Sgt. Rob Millard. "He's the first serial
killer from here that we know of.''
If
convicted of slaying two South Bay women and a third from San Francisco,
Perez would join a dubious hall of fame of Bay Area serial killers.
Long
before Perez allegedly killed his first known victim in San Jose in
1984, the Bay Area already had lived through the horrors of such killers
as Ed Kemper, who butchered six young women, his mother and another
woman in Santa Cruz County in 1972-73; Herbert Mullin, who killed 13
people in and around Santa Cruz in the early 1970s; and "Trailside
Killer'' David Carpenter, who killed two women in the Santa Cruz
Mountains in 1981 and four women and a man along Marin County trails in
1980.
Perez's victims "were basically just discarded women,'' said Santa
Clara County Chief Assistant District Attorney Karyn Sinunu. "There
might be others people know about, women who had a mental illness or
alcohol problems, just forgotten by society.''
San
Jose police and Sinunu announced Tuesday that Perez -- who has been in
prison for the 1999 sexual assault and attempted murder of a 14-year-old
San Francisco girl -- had been charged with murder in the deaths of
Florence Ruth Berrospe and Nestora McCune and is linked to the killing
of a San Francisco woman.
Police also have received several calls from other police departments,
including from New York, who have similar cases, although Perez has not
been linked to any murders outside the Bay Area so far. Files for the
two San Jose cases have been sealed until December to protect the
ongoing investigation, authorities said.
Perez, 40, lived in San Jose from 1983 to 1989, and "was a squatter,''
Millard said. "He would hang out with different people and stay with
them. He was a San Jose resident, but he was also a San Francisco
resident.'' Police also believe that Perez traveled to New York at one
point.
The
body of his first alleged San Jose victim surfaced in 1984.
On
the afternoon of July 24 that year, a passerby saw something unusual
underneath a bush on the shoulder of westbound Highway 237 in Sunnyvale,
said Sunnyvale Public Safety Lt. Marty Dale.
"Our
fire rigs go out there and confirm it was a dead body in a decayed
state,'' Dale said. "This woman was not identified initially. Her
remains were not identified until December 1989 when a call came in from
her son or son-in-law saying `that person might be my Mom' '' after
seeing a sketch of the woman on television.
It
was Florence Ruth Berrospe, who was 50 years old and separated from her
husband. She carried no ID, but was wearing a necklace with a charm that
read "#1 Grandma.''
Five
years later, the body of 61-year-old Nestora McCune was found beneath a
pile of dried eucalyptus leaves near the Brokaw Road on-ramp to Highway
101 in San Jose.
Both
women had been strangled and sexually assaulted. Both cases were
gathering dust in the "cold case'' files until this year.
"Our
county has a very low violent crime rate for such a big area,'' Sinunu
said. "As a result, our ace detectives are able to work these old
cases. Rob Millard took this one off the shelf. It had biological
evidence and he got a hit'' in a DNA database called CODIS that includes
DNA from both crime scenes and suspects.
The
case "has kind of ballooned into more than we expected,'' she said.
It
was the fourth cold case Millard and his partner, detective Sgt. Tim
Porter, revived this year.
After
getting a DNA hit on the evidence in San Jose, the detectives sent out a
teletype about the cases to police departments around the country "in
hopes of getting other law enforcement to look at their cold cases,''
Millard said.
"One
of the inquiries we got helped solve a Hayward case. The investigator
said, `It's not him, but by re-investigating the case, we got a hit.'
That's kind of cool,'' Millard said. Hayward police declined to discuss
their homicide case.
While
San Jose police continue their investigation, Sinunu said the public
could help.
"Everyone has someone they know about or some case they remember in the
newspaper that touched them,'' she said. "Has that been taken care of?
Has that case been solved? If someone knows of a case that might be
linked, we'll take a look at it. We're doing that right
now.''
Santa Clara Co. Serial Killer Gets Life In Prison
November 30, 2006
The man described by prosecutors as
Santa Clara County's first known serial killer has been sentenced to
life in prison without the possibility of parole for sexually assaulting
and strangling two women.
Luis Aguilar Perez pleaded
guilty last month and waived his right to a jury trial. He was spared
from the death penalty because he's mentally retarded.
Judge Rodney J. Stafford sentenced Perez on Wednesday to two consecutive
life sentences for killing Florence Ruth Berrospe, 50, in 1984 and
Nestora McCune, 61, in 1989. Perez will now travel to San Francisco,
where he is accused of killing a third woman.
In the
courtroom, Perez expressed remorse and told family members a "monster"
lurked within him and caused him to make a "stupid mistake."
Perez made statements to police indicating that he may have killed as
many as 30 women, but police haven't been able to substantiate his
claims, Deputy District Attorney Matthew Braker said.
