Overview
- Jurors found Perez guilty of multiple murders and of assault on a child under 8 resulting in death, and a multiple‑murder enhancement was found true.
- The victims were his children killed between 1992 and 2001 across Northern and Central California, all believed to be under six months old.
- The case opened in 2007 when an infant’s body was recovered from a weighted cooler in Conway Slough near Woodland.
- California’s Department of Justice used familial DNA in 2019 to identify the child as Nikko Lee Perez and to connect the deaths to four siblings.
- Arrested in January 2020 days before release from an unrelated prison term, Perez now faces life without parole with sentencing set for April 6, 2026, and only two of the five children’s remains have been recovered as the mother has pleaded guilty to child endangerment and testified about years of abuse.