ALAMO — Nearly six months after he allegedly killed his wife, Jose Perez walked into the San Juan Police Department, flagged down an officer and confessed.

With no investigators on his trail and no evidence pointing in his direction, the construction worker in his early 50s told police Friday that he strangled his wife in May and buried her in the backyard of their home northeast of Alamo, San Juan Police Chief Juan Gonzalez said.

“He committed a heinous act. He committed murder,” the chief said. “I think it was just laying on his conscience.”

Hidalgo County sheriff’s deputies unearthed the badly decomposed body of Agapita Perez, 48, nearly eight hours later, after her husband led them through the crime scene.

In the months leading up to her slaying, Jose Perez had argued with his wife over his suspicion that she was cheating on him with a man in Reynosa, according to the account he gave police.

The couple called sheriff’s deputies to their home on the 8000 block of Jam Square Road four times from February to May to referee disputes between them. But on May 24, their argument turned fatal, Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño said.

Not knowing their mother’s fate, the couple’s children asked sheriff’s deputies to check on their parents four days after she died.

Investigators visited the couple’s home but eventually called off their search when one of the couple’s sons said he had talked to his father on the phone and thought he heard his mother’s voice in the background.

“(Jose Perez) told him that they were in Reynosa and working out their problems,” the sheriff said. “There was no reason to believe they were in any danger.”

But by Friday, something had triggered Jose Perez’s guilt.

He first asked one of his sons to take him to the Donna Police Department just before 8 a.m. For some unknown reason, he changed his mind and asked to be driven to San Juan, said Gonzalez, the city’s police chief.

“He didn’t confess to his son,” he said. “He just told him that he had done something really bad and couldn’t live with it anymore.”

Because the house is outside city limits, the sheriff’s office was called in to take over the case.

Deputies spent much of the afternoon milling around the Perez family property waiting for a search warrant to dig up the earth. With Jose Perez by their side, they entered the backyard just before 2 p.m.

One of the man’s sons — looking on from behind crime scene tape — burst through a gate on an adjacent property to catch a glimpse of what his father would reveal, but family members eventually dragged him back behind police lines.

Investigators hope an autopsy of Agapita Perez’s body will corroborate much of her husband’s story. Without it, little evidence exists beyond his confession to convict him of murder, they said.

As of late Friday night, Jose Perez remained in the Hidalgo County Jail pending an arraignment hearing this afternoon where he is expected to be charged with murder.

Should he be convicted, he could face up to life in prison and a fine of up to $10,000.

____

Jeremy Roebuck covers courts and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4437.