Hunt for Bodies Will Test Allegations Against Perez

Federal investigators are preparing to search a garbage-strewn hillside near downtown Tijuana for the graves of three people who an informant claims were buried there by former Los Angeles Police Department officers Rafael Perez and David Mack, law enforcement sources confirmed Tuesday.

The search, expected to occur within days, is part of an ongoing federal investigation aimed at corroborating the allegations of 23-year-old Sonia Flores, Perez’s former lover. Investigators have so far been unable to confirm or disprove her allegations.

Perez, now in jail, is providing authorities with information on alleged police corruption in return for a lesser sentence for stealing cocaine; Mack is serving a prison sentence for bank robbery.

“We don’t know if she’s credible or not,” one law enforcement source said of Perez’s ex-lover.

Flores said she has been cooperating secretly with authorities since late last year, but the full scope of her allegations against Mack and Perez--two of the LAPD’s most notorious former officers--have not been previously disclosed.

In an interview with The Times on Monday, Flores said she watched as Mack and Perez killed a young man and an older woman during a botched drug deal in an apartment near downtown Los Angeles.

She said those two bodies and that of another person allegedly killed by Mack were driven across the border and buried in the middle of the night in what is essentially a garbage dump in the hills overlooking Tijuana. Flores alleges that she traveled to Tijuana with Perez and Mack when they disposed of the third body.

Despite what some sources said were “doubts” about Flores’ allegations, authorities have taken several concrete steps based on her information. The FBI has conducted forensic tests on the Bellevue Avenue apartment where Flores alleges the killings of a young cocaine dealer and his mother occurred. Investigators also obtained a search warrant and seized a 1986 black BMW belonging to another LAPD officer, which Flores says was used to dispose of the bodies. And late last week the young woman provided investigators with a hand-drawn map to the alleged Tijuana grave sites. Federal authorities confirm that they are making arrangements to have the area excavated.

One source familiar with the investigation said some of Flores’ claims have been corroborated.

“She said she had sex with Perez. Well, she had sex with Perez. She said that one officer had a black BMW and that was true too. We’re taking it one step at a time,” the source said.

Flores said the U.S. attorney has offered her an immunity agreement that would protect her from prosecution for any crimes in which she implicates herself. Federal authorities declined comment on that claim.

Winston Kevin McKesson, Perez’s lawyer, called Flores’ allegations “a desperate plea for attention.”

“At this point, I have not seen any facts that would lead me to believe that my client has not been totally forthright and honest throughout this investigation,” McKesson said.

Mack is serving a 14-year sentence in federal prison. His attorney, Donald M. Re, did not return a call seeking comment.

Flores approached The Times this week, in part, she said, because she is tired of investigators’ challenging the veracity of her allegations. She said she has been repeatedly threatened that if she is lying, she will be criminally charged.

“What reason do I have to lie. . . . What good can I get out of this?” asked Flores, who contends that she has offered to take a polygraph examination.

Investigators “came to me,” she said. “I didn’t come to them.”

Flores alleges that she had a years-long affair with Perez that began when she was a teenager. Perez has acknowledged having had sex with her, but said it was a one-time occurrence.

During the course of their alleged relationship, Flores alleges, she witnessed a variety of crimes, from drug dealing to murder.

According to Flores, she accompanied Perez and Mack on a drug deal in late 1994 or early 1995 that ended in the alleged double homicide.

Flores said she was with Perez and Mack at a “crash pad” apartment near the Rampart station when the officers, clad in black clothing, donned bulletproof vests. They said they were going to take care of some business, which she took to mean a drug deal. She said she got into a black BMW with the two officers, thinking little of it at the time because she had served as a courier in cocaine transactions for Perez on many occasions while they were dating.

On this night, Flores said, they drove to a nearby apartment on Bellevue to see an alleged drug dealer she knew as “Chino.” She said that after they went inside the second story apartment where the man lived with a woman Flores believes was his mother, an argument ensued. She said Perez, speaking in Spanish, began threatening the young man and his mother, saying that if they did not turn over money that the son owed to Perez and Mack, they would be killed.

Seconds later, she said, Perez pushed the man to the floor and shot him in the shoulder. As the man’s mother knelt down to console her wounded son, the two officers continued to demand their money, she said.

When no money was offered, Flores alleges, Perez stood over the man and fatally shot him in the head. She said Mack, who was armed with a handgun fitted with a silencer, then shot the sobbing mother in the head.

Flores said she was sitting on a couch just a few feet from where the two were shot and was splattered with blood. Mack, she said, ordered her to go to the kitchen and retrieve a plastic shopping bag, which he used to cover the woman’s head, which was bleeding profusely.

Perez and Mack then wrapped the bodies in carpet, securing it with duct tape, and carried them to the BMW and an LAPD patrol car that was outside, Flores said.

The patrol car was driven to the scene after the officers spoke via walkie-talkie “in code” to its driver, who was a friend of Mack and Perez’s, Flores said.

The current residents of the apartment confirmed to The Times that investigators recently removed carpet from their home and conducted tests for more than seven hours as they waited outside. Flores said she accompanied investigators to the scene and was able to provide them with a detailed layout of the apartment before they entered it to conduct their search.

After the shooting, Flores said, she was driven back to the crash pad and told to stay there and keep quiet. Perez and Mack made her remove her bloodstained clothing, she said. The next morning, she said, the officers threatened her and her family if she talked to anyone about the killings.

“I was sort of read my rights,” Flores said. “I had the right not to talk or I would be killed.”

She said Perez called her from jail to reiterate that threat shortly after he agreed to a plea bargain last September, in which he agreed to testify against allegedly corrupt officers in exchange for the lighter sentence for stealing cocaine from LAPD facilities.

Two months after the alleged killings, Flores said, she accompanied Mack and Perez on what she thought was a spur-of-the-moment road trip to Tijuana. Part way there, she claims, she learned that a woman’s body was hidden in the back of Perez’s Ford Explorer. She said the alleged victim was a girlfriend of Mack’s. Flores said they told her that they were going to dump the body in the same place where they had disposed of the other two.

Flores alleges that the officers had “a contact” within the Tijuana police force who helped them dispose of the bodies. She alleges that the pair believed that the Latino bodies wouldn’t be noticed south of the border, where the bodies of those killed in Tijuana’s drug violence turn up on nearly a daily basis. Flores said that the officers made her wait at a nearby beauty salon while they buried the woman’s body. Later that day, she said, Perez showed her the mounds of dirt where the victims were buried.

Flores’ allegations further complicate prosecutors’ efforts to bring charges against Perez’s former colleagues in the Rampart Division. Defense attorneys representing the four officers who are supposed to stand trial on corruption-related charges thisweek only recently learned some of Flores’ accusations. Her allegations, the attorneys contend, could further undermine Perez’s credibility.

Looking back, Flores said, she is surprised that she was allowed to live to tell her story years later.

“Mack and Perez are smart people,” she said. “The only stupid thing they did was having me around when they did this stuff.”