A New Mexico man, overwhelmed by guilt, borrowed a cellphone to call 911 and confess to the 2008 killing of his former landlord and also told police where the body was buried, authorities said on Tuesday.
Police said that Tony Ray Peralta, 37, of Roswell, was booked into the Chaves County jail on suspicion of murder.
Peralta went to a store on Monday afternoon, borrowed a cellphone to call 911 and told a dispatcher that he had killed someone, police said.
Photo: AP
Officers went to the store and Peralta was detained for questioning.
Police investigators then obtained a search warrant for a house where Peralta had been a tenant of 69-year-old William Blodgett.
He told them where he buried the body, and they found a boot, bones and dentures after removing plywood floorboards from a detached room on the side of the house.
A tearful Peralta told police during an interview that he did not know why he had killed Blodgett and that he just needed to confess, an affidavit filed with the criminal complaint showed.
Peralta told police he came forward because “his heart hurts” and that the killing had been eating at him.
He told the officer to tell Blodgett’s family “that he was a good man and that he didn’t deserve what I did.”
“I don’t have an excuse,” he was quoted in the affidavit as telling police. “A lot of people have an excuse. I don’t have one.”
Peralta was being represented by the major crimes unit within the public defender’s office.
“We are just beginning to work with Mr Peralta on this case, and we will make sure Mr Peralta’s due process is respected as this case starts to move through the court,” said attorney Ray Conley, who leads the unit.
The dentures found at the property were compared with Blodgett’s dental records — obtained in early 2009 after he was reported missing — and that led to a positive identification, police said.
Blodgett’s girlfriend and family had not seen him since late December 2008. She told police that Peralta, who was considered a suspect by police early on, allegedly had some sort of argument or fight with Blodgett, who had tried to evict him.
Authorities at the time had talked to Blodgett’s family, friends and neighbors and visited the home the two men shared, which appeared to have been abandoned with personal belongings still in place.
Police found no immediate signs of foul play and Blodgett’s vehicle was still there, the original missing person report showed.
Detectives would periodically drive by the house, but never spotted anyone. They also brought a dog trained to sniff for bodies to the property, but found nothing.
Police said the case went cold after investigators exhausted all leads until Peralta’s 911 call.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
CONFIDENCE BOOSTER: ’After parkour ... you dare to do a lot of things that you think only young people can do,’ a 67-year-old parkour enthusiast said In a corner of suburban Singapore, Betty Boon vaults a guardrail, crawls underneath a slide, executes forward shoulder rolls and scales a steep slope, finishing the course to applause. “Good job,” the 69-year-old’s coach cheers. This is “geriatric parkour,” where about 20 retirees learned to tackle a series of relatively demanding exercises, building their agility and enjoying a sense of camaraderie. Boon, an upbeat grandmother, said learning parkour has aided her confidence and independence as she ages. “When you’re weak, you will be dependent on someone,” she said after sweating it out with her parkour classmates in suburban Toa Payoh,
Chinese dissident artist Gao Zhen (高兟), famous for making provocative satirical sculptures of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東), was tried on Monday over accusations of “defaming national heroes and martyrs,” his wife and a rights group said. Gao, 69, who was detained in 2024 during a visit from the US, faces a maximum three-year prison sentence, said his wife, Zhao Yaliang (趙雅良), and Shane Yi, a researcher at the Chinese Human Rights Defenders group which operates outside the nation. The closed-door, one-day trial took place at Sanhe City People’s Court in Hebei Province neighboring the capital, Beijing, and ended without a
‘TOXIC CLIMATE’: ‘I don’t really recognize Labour anymore... The idea that you can implement far-right ideas in order to stop the far right is nonsense,’ a protester said Tens of thousands of people on Saturday marched through central London to protest against the far right, weeks ahead of local elections and six months after Britain saw one of its largest far-right demonstrations. Organized by hundreds of civic groups, including trade unions, anti-racism campaigners and Muslim representative bodies, Saturday’s Together Alliance event was billed as the biggest in UK history to counter right-wing extremism. A separate pro-Palestinian march had also converged with the main rally. While organizers claimed 500,000 had turned out in total, the police gave a figure of about 50,000. Protesters carrying placards with slogans such as
RSS