Sep 30, 2015 Shoulda kept his mouth shut. _______________ LUIS Perez thought he had committed the perfect murder. There was no body. There were no fingerprints and no DNA to connect the 49-year-old to the 2006 murder of Bruce Blackwood. But a series of taped conversations, where he boasted about choking, slicing and dicing his 50-year-old victim and the meticulous cleaning job that followed, lead to Mr Perez’s ultimate downfall almost a decade later in a New York court. Prosecutors laid out a convincing case against the former handyman, describing the grisly homicide as “devious, methodical and calculated”. So convincing was the evidence, the jury took just three-hours to reach a guilty verdict at Brooklyn Supreme Court on Monday. Mr Blackwood’s body has never been found. "" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto !important; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: auto !important; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-size: 17px; vertical-align: bottom; display: block;"> Jurors heard over a month of chilling testimony, including recorded conversations where Mr Perez described: “I had to fu**ing cut. I would slice it like I was slicing chicken”. Mr Perez was found guilty of second-degree murder after dismembering Mr Blackwood in his Brooklyn property, after the victim discovered his hired handyman had forged cheques to the tune of $7700 in his name. “He did everything possible to escape justice,” said Assistant District Attorney Melissa Carvajal in her closing argument. “Bruce Blackwood did not just disappear. He did not fall of the face of this Earth. He is dead. Bruce Blackwood was murdered. That fact is clear. The man who did that was Luis Perez.” Prior to his arrest, Mr Perez spent 18 years in a Massachusetts prison for attempting to k--- his wife and step daughter. Perez faces 25 years to life when he’s sentenced on October 13. Luis Perez has been found guilty of the gruesome murder of Bruce Blackwood.Source:Supplied A RECIPE FOR MURDER — ‘I’M GOING TO TORTURE HIM’ Bruce Blackwood was killed in an apartment in this complex in 2006.Source:Supplied For a month before his death, Mr Blackwood was largely unaware of the criminal activities taking place around him. In February 2006, he had purchased a property in Brooklyn, New York, in an effort to renovate the building and rent out the apartments. He placed a classified ad looking for a handyman to commit to the project, and he eventually met and hired Luis Perez. The pair came to an agreement that Mr Perez would live at the property while renovations were taking place. But things took a dark turn when Mr Perez discovered Mr Blackwood’s cheque book, and he took financial matters into his own hands. Every day, from February 17-24, Mr Perez wrote himself a $500 cheque, sometimes twice a day. Twelve were written in total. But it wasn’t enough for Mr Perez. He wanted more. “He was planning on killing him. He was planning on torturing him, getting his bank numbers and getting his PIN numbers,” said a witness who worked with Mr Perez at the time. “He said he was going to sit him in a chair, put tape on him, torture him, and make him give all his money and PIN numbers. He mentioned it a few times. He said, ‘are you down with it’? He asked if I was willing to help him get rid of Mr Blackwood. He told me after he was going to cut him up in pieces and dispose of him in plastic bags.” MOST TELLING PIECE OF EVIDENCE Five days before his disappearance, Mr Blackwood discovered the cheque forgery. He went to the police, and was told to return with appropriate documentation for evidence. That night, he spoke to his friend, Diane Mason-Smith, and tells her he’s going to confront Mr Perez at the Brooklyn apartment block. It was Thursday night. He planned to confront Mr Perez on Monday, March 6, the day of his murder. It’s the last time the close friends would ever speak to each other. THE MORNING OF THE MURDER On the Monday morning, Mr Blackwood returned to the property to confront Mr Perez about the stolen cheques. He made his final phone call at 10:45am that morning. Mr Blackwood called work and told them that he can’t come in because he slipped and hit his head on the bathtub. He’s lying. Mr Blackwood lived in Queens, and cell phone records indicate he was at the Brooklyn property, and with Mr Perez, at the time he makes the call. Evidence suggests Mr Perez held a toy gun, wrapped in black masking tap, to Mr Blackwood’s head, and forced him to make the call. Mr Blackwood would never be heard from again. While Perez has been found guilty of killing Mr Blackwood in this apartment, it took nine years before he was brought to justice.Source:Supplied FROM MISSING PERSON TO MURDER The lack of evidence at the time of Mr Blackwood’s disappearance lead police to close the case cold. He was listed as a missing person until 2011, when his family and a retired detective lobbied the NYPD to open the case as a homicide. At the time, the New York Daily News ran a story on the fifth anniversary of Mr Blackwood’s disappearance, and Mr Perez’s daughter spied the story and contacted police. “I know the person who killed Bruce Blackwood,” Ms Perez allegedly told authorities. When asked who and how, she responded, “It’s my father, because he told me”. “She said she was afraid to go home,” said Detective Wendell Stradford, of the NYPD’s Cold Case Squad. THE RECORDINGS During the trial the prosecution played secretly recorded conversations between Mr Perez and his daughter, Irene Perez, from 2011. Ms Perez became a key witness in the trial for prosecutors; it was the calls that lead authorities to charge Mr Perez. In an August 1 conversation, Mr Perez admits to killing Mr Blackwood because “he found out” about the cheque forgery scheme. “It’s not fair to Blackwood’s family,” Ms Perez tells her father. “They don’t have a place to go visit and they don’t have closure. God forbid you die. I’d want a place to go on Father’s Day, and these people don’t have that.” He laughs. “He found out. I wasn’t going to rot. I’m not trying to go back to jail.” “Did you do it on purpose?” Irene asks. “Yes. I do what I gotta do. Now I know how to destroy a mother f*cker.” “You don’t come across to me as someone who kills someone and chops someone up,” Ms Perez pleads. “When the sh*t hits the fan I don’t know any other way to solve a problem. I was angry and I was anxious. I did what I had to do. Never leave a witness alive, because if you do that’s the downfall for the rest of your life. “Don’t watch Law and Order or CSI, you gotta watch Criminal Minds,” Mr Perez says before relaying the fact he’s not trying to be famous with his slaying. “They [police] couldn’t find Mr Blackwood, because if they did, my prints would be all over his neck.” “I snapped his neck but I really didn’t mean to, I was just trying to put him to sleep. “I was choking too hard, I snapped his neck. I had to take matters in my own hands. He told me the police were going to come get me and arrest me. I wasn’t going; I wasn’t trying to go back to jail. I was like ‘man, f*ck you’. “I wasn’t planning on doing it, but you know, this is something I can’t dwell on.” Later, during the trial, an explosive telephone call by Mr Perez revealed the lengths he’ll go to stay out of prison. Mr Perez made the call to his daughter from the city’s notorious prison, Riker’s Island, on September 12, 2015. Just over a week later Ms Perez, was brought to court to testify against her father as a material witness. The recorded conversation, spoken in Spanish, was translated for jurors and read by Assistant District Attorney Melissa Carvajal. “There is a way that you and I can get out of this OK. You heard?” Mr Perez said. “OK,” replied Ms Perez. “What you have to do is say that they threatened you. In case they call you to take the chair and talk, you say the same thing, that they threatened you, and all that, and then you start to cry and all that s**t.” Ms Perez replies, “OK”. “Tell everybody else what’s up”. “OK”. “I love you sweetie.” Perez boasted of his cleaning method to his daughter Irene Perez.Source:Supplied In the recorded conversations, Mr Perez detailed how after he choked and chopped Mr Blackwood, how he meticulously cleaned the apartment with hospital-grade bleach and heavy-duty, powdered carpet cleaner in order to rid the scene of evidence. “It’s not about committing the perfect crime — it’s just about how well you clean it up,” he said. “I used garbage bags to put the body in. I put everything in garbage bags. I cleaned the area, I bleached everything. Mr Perez described how he used heavy plastic sheets inside the apartment, where authorities believe he chopped up the body, before scrubbing away the blood splatter and pouring bleach down the drains to clear them of any residual blood. “I put plastic all the way down, I did what I had to do. They’ll never find out, I’ve done such a good job of concealing it. “I was totally doing my sh*t. I cleaned that whole room for five hours, I bleached the walls and everything. There was a time when I had to stop because there was too much bleach, so you know I had to use some fabric softener. He also borrowed an industrial carpet cleaner from a neighbour and described using fabric softener again after becoming “light headed”: “That smells good so I put that sh*t in the machine”. “The best place to k--- someone is on ceramic tiles, but I had wall to wall rugs,” Mr Perez said. Authorities never found a trace a trace of foul play inside the crime scene. “You know that bleach takes away blood. [But] stuff gets stuck in the pipes, blood splatter in the bathtub, you could wash it down with f*cking Ajax and the vics blood will still be there.” “How did you get the blood off the tub?” Ms Perez asks. “Bleach. You take blood out of anything with bleach. Odourless bleach kills it all. “I put the big construction plastic down, the real, real thick plastic. That’s what I put down. I put it on the floor. I used garbage bags once everything was done.” Ms Peres asked: “How do you know 100 per cent that everything was cleaned up, even if you used the bleach?” “Because I cleaned it myself,” Mr Perez answered. “You have to know how to clean it. I know it’s been used before, it’ll f*ck you up. I used 12 cans of Draino, I had 2 boxes of dust bleach, I had 15 boxes and bottles of liquid bleach. I put four bottles of the draino in the pipes first, I ran the cold water, I let that burn, whatever stuck to the pipe, all that sh*t’s clean. “That is the best way to cover your tracks. You might miss a f*cking spot but that one little spot is gonna get you jail for the rest of your life. Bag it up. Do it in a small area.” After he was finished, he told her: “I sat down and smoked a cigarette.” A couple of days after the murder, Mr Perez’s then-girlfriend, Irene Michaux, saw her lover dismantling a saw and placing its parts in a garbage bag. He was wearing latex gloves. “He said ‘Bruce is gone and he is not coming back’,” Ms Michaux, testified in court. “The cops will never find Bruce Blackwood. I went to work on his body. They’ll never find him. “He told me, ‘don’t say anything’. He said if I said anything, he was coming after me and my family.” Perez said he cut Mr Blackwood’s body into small pieces to make it easier to dispose of.Source:Supplied WHERE IS THE BODY? After choking Mr Blackwood to death, Mr Perez realised he had to get rid of his body. His plan? Dismembering. The smaller the parts, the easier to get rid of the body without anyone noticing. Along with various cleaning supplies, prosecutors introduced a stockpile of weapons found at the murder scene, including two hunting knives, a kitchen knife, a meat cleaver, and a “sawzall” blade. “You used a machete, too?” Irene Perez asked in the recording. “I had to,” Mr Perez replied. “I had to f*cking cut because when you’re trying to use the sawzall on the skin it would just rip and the skin would make a mess, I was like ‘oh d---, oh no way’. “I would slice it like I was slicing a piece of chicken. “The saw can make a lot of mess. I cleaned the saw in the tub, but I wasn’t stupid because I poured the dust first, the bleach powder, then I started picking everything apart. I had on gloves and I was taking the sh*t apart. “I’d soak it in the dust, then I’d let it sit there for a few minutes or a half-hour. Then it turned the water orange. You knew when to wash the sh*t down.” ‘YOU ARE A MONSTER, PLAIN AND SIMPLE’ You are a monster, plain and simple. There is no other way I can describe you and how you murdered and dismembered my brother’s body without any remorse,” Edward Blackwood, brother of the victim, said in a statement to Mr Perez. “How you conjured up this evil jealousy of my brother’s generosity and hard work to you. There is not enough words to describe your hideous evilness. May you rot in jail for the rest of your life. You have taken my brother away from me. He is only a memory in our minds that will last an eternity. I hope you suffer for the duration of your lifetime.” Source: news.com.au
Oct 1, 2015 Boasting about killings seems to be a common thing for murderers. They wear it like a badge of honour.
