The girl accused her relative of abuse. The LAPD linked him to an unsolved rape
A man who was arrested last year on suspicion of sexually abusing a new relative, has been linked to the case of raping another teenager in 1997 in Koreatown, according to the latest court documents in this long-unsolved case.
The Koreatown investigation dragged on for nearly three decades until DNA was found that led to Wilfredo Romeo Perez, an LAPD sex investigator wrote in an affidavit seeking Perez’s arrest.
Det. Ernesto Escoto wrote in an April 7 affidavit that Perez became a suspect after a young woman in his family reported to authorities that he had been sexually abusing her for years.
A relative of Perez first reported the alleged assault last April, telling Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department investigators that the abuse began when he was 11 and occurred multiple times, according to the affidavit.
Police said Perez was out on bond after being charged with sexually abusing a minor and other related charges. He pleaded not guilty and is due back in court next month, court records said.
A message left with one of Perez’s attorneys was not immediately returned Wednesday morning.
When police uploaded Perez’s history to a national database, they found a blow that matched him to evidence collected in the 1997 case, according to Escoto’s affidavit.
The victim in that incident, who was 14 years old, told the police that his attacker was sitting in his car when he threatened to kill his family if he did not have sex with him. He then hit her repeatedly, police said.
The woman, now in her 40s, sat down for further interviews with two Los Angeles Police Department investigators and two prosecutors from the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office in Long Beach late last month, according to Escoto’s affidavit.
He recalled getting lost in an unknown part of town and wanting to call his mother to pick him up, the affidavit said. The victim, he told investigators, said he would take him to the nearest phone. He said he didn’t want to get into his car. They drove the car for a distance until he came up and started hitting her, according to the detective’s report.
While doing so, the woman recalled, she reached into the back seat to grab a metal object, which she feared was a gun, but she did not see it. After the incident, he threatened to kill her and her family if she ever said anything about what happened, the affidavit said.
When he dropped her off at her home, the sun was rising, the woman told authorities. He immediately told his mother, who called 911. The girl was taken to a local hospital, where medical personnel collected evidence. But authorities were unable to identify the suspect until the latest investigation.
For years, the LAPD has struggled to clear a decades-old backlog of uninvestigated rape cases that at one point numbered more than 6,100. But thanks to a combination of federal grants, public funds and private donations, the department in 2011 began a project to deal with thousands of pieces of DNA evidence – despite the constant shortage of staff in the department’s laboratory – which led to the arrest of hundreds of sexual abuse.
A 2020 study by the state attorney general’s office found that the department still has about 500 uninvestigated rape cases, most of which date back to 2015.
Escoto’s search warrant affidavit says that in addition to the DNA evidence against Perez, he also matches the physical description of the first victim: A 20-year-old man with a medium complexion and long and short hair.
