Murder suspect bound over for trial
A Wisconsin Department of Justice special agent testified last week in Clark County Circuit Court that multiple witnesses told investigators how Cassandra Ayon had expressed fear of Jesus Contreras Perez in the days and weeks preceding her disappearance last October.
That testimony was enough for Judge Joseph Boles to bind Contreras Perez over for trial on charges of first-degree intentional homicide/as party to a crime, hiding a corpse/as party to a crime, and stalking/resulting in bodily harm.
Contreras Perez, 41, Mosinee, was charged on June 7 with the three felony counts in connection to the alleged murder of the 27-year-old Ayon of rural Loyal. Although neither Ayon’s remains nor her car have been seen since Oct. 3, prosecutors have pressed charges against Contreras Perez based on witness accounts of threatening events that took place in the days prior to her disappearance.
DOJ Special Agent Adam Frederick said at a July 2 preliminary hearing for Contreras Perez that multiple witnesses have told investigators how Ayon knew Contreras Perez was following her and had threatened her safety on several occasions.
Even on the night she disappeared, Frederick said, Ayon was anxious that Contreras Perez was stalking her. She was at a friend’s house in Marshfield that evening, and kept looking out the window to see if Contreras Perez was there.
“She was afraid that Jesus would show up because he was following her,” Frederick said witnesses told investigators.
After leaving Marshfield, Ayon went to a friend’s house in Unity, and left there about 3:45 a.m. That was the last time she was seen. Investigators who checked Ayon’s cell phone usage records found that her device went dead at 4 a.m.
“It indicates the phone was either turned off, broken, destroyed, or all of the above,” Frederick said.
Earlier on the day she disappeared, investigators found that a subject thought to be Contreras Perez entered Ayon’s car while it was parked at Marathon Cheese, where she worked. Surveillance video of the parking lot shows an SUV similar to the one Contreras Perez drove parking next to Ayon’s vehicle, and a subject then exiting the SUV and entering Ayon’s car. Ayon later moved her car during her shift, and the same subject later returned to the parking lot apparently looking for it, Frederick said.
Frederick also recounted statements from witnesses who said Contreras Perez had threatened Ayon in the weeks prior to her disappearance. On one occasion, a friend was walking with Ayon on a rural road near her home when Contreras Perez showed up in his vehicle and confronted her.
“She said that Jesus was abusive to her in the past and had followed her in the past as well,” Frederick said the witness told investigators. “She was fearful that he was following her after a recent breakup” and that she feared “something bad would happen to her.”
On another occasion, a different witness said he had been out with Ayon the night before, and that Ayon told him Contreras Perez was waiting for her at her home when she arrived.
“He told her he was upset with her being with other males and that if he caught her with them they would get hurt and she would get hurt,” Frederick said the witness told investigators.
In the days following her family’s report to police of her disappearance, Frederick said investigators attempted to contact Contreras Perez at the farm near Mosinee where he worked, but learned he had left the area. He was later found to have traveled to Minnesota and Iowa. When he did call police, Frederick said, “He said he left the area because he was scared. He said he and Cassandra had gotten into a fight but he didn’t hurt her.”
Contreras Perez’s employer later told investigators that Contreras Perez had reported his work-issued cellular phone as lost the day of Ayon’s disappearance. Investigators checked surveillance video of the cell phone store and saw Contreras Perez was there by 9:50 that morning to get a new phone, less than six hours after Ayon was last seen.
Christine Kuczynski, the public defender assigned to Contreras Perez’s case, questioned the timeline following Ayon’s disappearance. Ayon was last seen just before 4 a.m., Kuczynski noted, and Contreras Perez was seen on video at the farm where he worked by 6 a.m.
“Is it plausible in a 2-hour and 15-minute window the defendant could have done any of this?” she said of the alleged murder and disposal of the body and car.
Kuczynski also asked the judge to at least dismiss the charges of hiding a corpse and stalking. On the charge of hiding a corpse, she said there’s no basis for the charge.
“There’s no body,” she said. “I can’t even make the argument for what the transactional relationship would be. It’s supposition. There’s no body.”
Judge Joles, of Pierce County, said sufficient evidence exists to determine Contreras Perez was likely involved in a felony, and bound him over for further proceedings. He is being held in the Clark County Jail on a $1 million cash bond, and will be arraigned on Aug. 4.
