WICHITA, Kan. (AP) - The Kansas Supreme Court has unanimously upheld the convictions for murder and other charges against the leader and self-proclaimed seer of a Kansas commune that lived off the life insurance payouts of its dead members.
The state’s highest court affirmed on Friday the convictions against Daniel U. Perez. Perez was also convicted of fraud for lying on life insurance applications as well as with numerous counts of rape and other sexual assault charges involving young girls who had been living at the commune with their mothers.
Although Perez is charged with only one murder count for the 2003 death of Hughes, several members who carried hefty life insurance policies also have died.
A 2001 airplane crash near Norris, S.D., killed Mona Griffith, her 12-year-old daughter and her boyfriend. Others include the 2006 death of Brian Hughes, the slain woman’s husband, when he was crushed by a car when a jack apparently failed and the 2008 death of Jennifer Hutson in a head-on collision with a dump truck.
Authorities initially believed Hughes’ death was an accident. Perez was charged in 2011 when a young woman who had been 12 at the time told authorities Hughes’ drowning was staged, and that Perez had foretold her death weeks earlier. Other women also testified that Perez, who convinced his followers that he was a seer hundreds of years old, had also predicted other deaths of group members.
Witnesses at his trial portrayed Perez as a domineering leader who kept a tight rein on his young, mostly female followers.
The appeals court justices rejected a defense argument that jurors should have been allowed to consider a lesser charge of assisted suicide. The court also rejected defense arguments that the trial court should not have allowed evidence of prior crimes during the trial.
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