By Susan Montoya Bryan - The Associated Press
Officers found Tony Peralta sitting on a curve not far from the store where he borrowed a cellphone to call 911 and confess to killing his former landlord in 2008.
Sweating and taking puffs from his cigarette, Peralta told them he was tired of living in lies and weighed down by a sense of guilt. He then agreed to take the officers to the place where he had buried the body, before getting up and letting himself put on the handcuffs.
Police in the Roswell community in southeastern New Mexico released recordings of the 911 call and nearly an hour of footage from a police officer's camera, at the request of The Associated Press. The May 1 video shows Peralta thanking officers on several occasions for stopping him.
Tony Peralta, in a video capture of Roswell police, New Mexico.
"I'm going to confess, man. I'm going to confess. I don't want to live without confessing anymore," he said as he sat in an interrogation room at police headquarters.
"There's a corpse in there!"
The police and detectives who spoke with Peralta asked him many questions about when the murder had occurred, how and why. Peralta said he didn't know or remember, and acknowledged that he "had drunk a lot" the day he called 911.
Peralta, 37, was charged Tuesday with first-degree murder. His public defender stated that he was going to make sure he was treated fairly, while the case was handled in the court system.
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A judge on Tuesday set Peralta's trial for October, but said the date could be changed.
Authorities asked Peralta if he was making up the story and leading them down a deceptive path, as he wasn't offering many details, beyond saying he had killed someone a long time ago.
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"There's a dead body in there, man!" he told one of the officers in the patrol car in front of the home where 69-year-old William Blodgett was once a tenant. Peralta said he would feel better once the body was found.
Investigators said they had obtained a search warrant and found a boot, bones and dentures after removing a wooden floor in a room next to the house.
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The dentures were compared to Blodgett's dental records, obtained when he was reported missing in 2009, and matched the victim's records, according to police.
The motive for the crime
Through tears, Peralta told police he didn't know why he killed Blodgett. At one point, police video shows him putting his head on the table and crying.
Peralta told officers he had decided to confess because "his heart hurt" and he thought about the crime every day. He added that Blodgett was a good man and had killed him for no reason while he was high on methamphetamines.
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"I have no excuse," he said. "A lot of people have one. I don't."
Blodgett's girlfriend and her family had not seen him since late December 2008. The woman, who was considered a suspect early in the investigation, told police Peralta had some kind of argument with Blodgett, who tried to get him out of the house.
Around the time, authorities had spoken to Blodgett's family, friends and neighbors, and visited the home the two men shared, which appeared abandoned with personal belongings inside. Police found no signs of crime immediately and Blodgett's vehicle was at the scene, according to the initial report of the disappearance.
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Detectives periodically drove around the house but never saw anyone. They also brought a dog trained to search for skeletal remains on the property, but they never found them.
Police said the case cooled after investigators exhausted all leads, right down to Peralta's 911 call.