After a year of knocking on doors and following leads, Ontario police say they are at a standstill and hope that someone in the community may have seen something or heard something last January.
“This is a classic whodunit investigation at this point,” Detective Jeff Wentz said. “We’ve interviewed dozens and dozens of people, written search warrants on numerous residents, numerous cellphones. We’ve had the crime scene diagnosed as far as DNA, fingerprints left, and at this point, we’ve run out of leads.”
Art Perez’s underwear-clad body was found in his office around 8:30 a.m. Jan. 27, 2016, officials said. He suffered a gunshot wound to his “upper body,” police said.
While a weapon was not found at the scene, investigators did find two cellphones belonging to the 56-year-old Ontario businessman in the toilet of the women’s bathroom. The bathroom was across the hall from his office.
The phones were analyzed and some information was extracted from the devices, but Wentz said the leads went nowhere.
The family continues to run the business, but Art Perez’s office has been cleared out and converted to a sort of stark shrine to the patriarch. A large religious picture of Jesus Christ, known as El Sagrado Corazon de Jesus in Spanish — with his heart exposed through his robes — leans up against a wall surrounded by candles the family lights every day in Art Perez’s honor.
“I can’t go in there, not really,” Bertha Perez said, “but we have to keep the business going. It’s what we built.”
There are reminders of Art Perez’s life scattered throughout the three warehouses that comprise the Ontario business; one of the larger is a gift Bertha Perez made to her husband eight years ago: a glass-finished black 1960 Chevrolet Impala.
“He loved old cars. This is one he’d wanted for a long time,”
