Ex-Lover Says She Witnessed Murders by Perez, Mack

Members of a joint FBI-LAPD corruption task force are investigating a woman’s allegation that former LAPD Officers Rafael Perez and David Mack killed two people in a “crash pad” apartment near the Rampart police station where Perez once worked, several law enforcement sources confirmed Friday.

Thursday evening, investigators armed with a federal search warrant seized a 1986 BMW that the woman--one of Perez’s ex-lovers--said was used to dispose of the bodies, according to one source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The source said the woman, whom law enforcement officials have asked The Times not to name for safety reasons, claims to have witnessed the alleged killings.

“There is some corroboration,” the source said. “We feel compelled to look at it.”

Although the allegations, if true, could undermine Perez’s credibility in other corruption cases, there are deep concerns about the woman’s own credibility and serious doubts about her story, other sources said.

Attorney Winston Kevin McKesson, who represents Perez, said that he asked the former officer about the allegation and that Perez denied it.

“I’m totally convinced, in the words of Shakespeare, this is much ado about nothing,” McKesson said.

Mack’s attorney, Donald M. Re, did not return a telephone call seeking comment Friday.

The allegations are the most recent in a series that may further damage Perez’s value as a witness against other allegedly corrupt officers. He also could be criminally charged with anything he deliberately withheld from investigators during his extensive interrogations.

Details of the woman’s allegations against Perez, the convicted drug thief at the heart of the LAPD’s corruption scandal, and Mack, a convicted bank robber, are scant. Federal authorities and LAPD officials declined to comment publicly on the case. The search warrant application that prompted the judge to approve the seizure of the car was filed under seal.

The woman, who says she had a years-long affair with Perez that began when she was a teenager, also has told authorities that she witnessed a major cocaine transaction between Perez and Mack outside a Hollywood nightclub in 1992.

Perez, who is cooperating with authorities as part of a plea deal in which he was sentenced to five years in prison for stealing cocaine booked as evidence, maintains that he never engaged in criminal activity with Mack, his former partner and close friend. He also denies that he committed any crimes before joining the Rampart Division’s anti-gang CRASH unit in 1995.

Despite investigators’ skepticism about some elements of the woman’s story, there is evidence that she had access to the world of Perez and his fellow LAPD officers at a time when Perez admits he committed numerous crimes, both on duty and off.

The woman was able to lead investigators to the so-called crash pad unassisted and described in detail the third-floor apartment in an expensive building a few minutes from the Rampart station where officers allegedly went to use drugs and meet their girlfriends. It was there, the witness alleges, that she had sex with Perez while she was still a minor.

She also knew details about the BMW that she says was used in the alleged double killing, according to law enforcement sources familiar with the case.

Although LAPD investigators have been aware of some of the woman’s claims since January, federal authorities only recently learned of her existence, according to one high-ranking law enforcement source.

FBI agents seized the BMW from Henry Covarrubias, a Rampart officer who investigators say rented the “crash pad.”

Covarrubias, who remains on active duty, has not been implicated in the crime.

In an interview Friday morning, the officer said he refused a request by the FBI to search his car. He said the agents then obtained a warrant, declining to tell him what it was based upon.

Informed by The Times of the allegations against Mack and Perez, Covarubbias immediately dismissed them.

“That’s absurd. That just makes me laugh,” he said. “I’m not worried about a thing.”

Covarubbias declined to discuss what relationship, if any, he had with the two incarcerated ex-officers.

“I was just a nice guy who was in the wrong places at the wrong times,” he said.

One law enforcement source familiar with the case said investigators plan to perform a series of tests on the car in an effort to find evidence corroborating the woman’s account. The tests will probably include the use of Luminol, a substance that makes even trace amounts of blood detectable after years.

Defense Attorneys Express Outrage

Attorneys representing defendants arrested by Perez, and those representing police officers he has since accused of crimes, are outraged that they are only now receiving information about the allegations of the woman, who was first interviewed by police in January.

District attorney’s officials maintain that they were not made aware of the witness’ allegations until about three weeks ago, at which time they began to notify defense lawyers with relevant cases.

Among the first to learn of the witness’ relationship with Perez was attorney Arthur Goldberg. He represents Anthony Adams, who says Perez coerced his former lover into falsely identifying Adams as a participant in a 1996 slaying outside a McDonald’s restaurant. Goldberg said that, even as he argued to have Adams’ conviction overturned, the LAPD withheld the fact that Perez had had a sexual relationship with the witness in his case.

When prosecutors finally turned over the documents earlier this month, Goldberg provided them to The Times, which published a story Sunday detailing the woman’s allegations about the drug deal between Perez and Mack.

After publication of that article, defense attorneys representing four of Perez’s former Rampart colleagues complained that they, too, had been denied access to the information, even though the officers’ trial was scheduled to start within days.

Superior Court Judge Jacqueline A. Connor, who is presiding over the trial, also was troubled by the delay. In a hearing Thursday, she gave the LAPD 48 hours to turn over all exculpatory information involving Perez. Failure to do so, she warned, could lead to dismissal of the case.

For more than two years, LAPD detectives have been searching for evidence of a criminal link between Mack and Perez, who shared tastes for flashy clothes, expensive cigars and attractive women.

The fact that investigators find most difficult to cast aside as coincidence is that the two traveled to Las Vegas two days after Mack robbed a bank of more than $700,000 in November 1997. Along for the ride was fellow Officer Sam Martin and another of Perez’s lovers, Veronica Quesada, a convicted drug dealer.

In interviews with police, Perez has denied that he and Mack were anything but good friends and onetime partners in a narcotics unit.

Perez, in fact, credits Mack with saving his life in October 1993 when the two were involved in an on-duty shooting. Mack shot and killed an alleged drug dealer during an undercover narcotics operation that went awry. That shooting, which cemented the relationship between the two officers, has since come under renewed scrutiny and is the subject of a lawsuit by the dead man’s family.