Suspect charged with murder
Mosinee man accused of killing missing Loyal woman
Jesus Contreras Perez allegedly told Cassandra Ayon last fall that if she ever cheated on him, “he knew where to hide Ayon’s body so that no one would ever find it.”
A first-degree homicide complaint filed Monday against Contreras Perez indicates he meant what he said. Contreras Perez, 41, Mosinee, has been in the Clark County Jail on a $25,000 cash bond since April 27, when he was charged with stalking Ayon. The 27-year-old Ayon has not been seen since the early morning hours of Oct. 3, 2020, at a friend’s house in Unity, and new charges were filed Monday against her former boyfriend and father of her 7-year-old child.
Charges filed Monday include firstdegree intentional homicide/as party to a crime, hiding a corpse/as party to a crime, and stalking resulting in bodily harm/domestic abuse. The first charge carries a mandatory lifetime prison sentence upon conviction, while the charges of hiding a corpse and stalking each carry a maximum prison term of 12-1/2 years. Contreras Perez is set to make an initial appearance on the charges on June 15 in Clark County Circuit Court.
The new complaint filed Monday adds to the information filed in the April 27 complaint detailing Contreras Perez’s alleged stalking of Ayon in the days and weeks prior to her disappearance.
Witnesses interviewed by investigators told how Ayon was afraid of what Contreras Perez might do to her after they broke up about three weeks before she went missing. One witness said Ayon told her if something happened to her, that Contreras Perez should be considered the suspect. Ayon is known to have left work at Marathon Cheese in Marathon City on the evening of Oct. 2, then went to a friend’s house in Marshfield. After she left there, she went to another friend’s house in Unity. After she left there shortly before 4 a.m., she was not seen again. Family members reported her missing within the next two days.
According to the new complaint, Ayon had lived with Contreras Perez at his place of employment, Johnson Creek Dairy near Mosinee. The couple had apparently broken up about three weeks before Ayon disappeared, and she had moved to a house across the road from her parents’ home northeast of Loyal. She still had contact with Contreras Perez, as she would take their child to school in the morning and he would drop the child off at her parents’ home in the afternoon.
The complaint alleges that Contreras Perez had stalked Ayon in the weeks prior to Oct. 3, on one occasion confronting her on a rural road near Loyal while she was walking with a friend. On another occasion in June, a friend said he had been out with Ayon one night, and Contreras Perez was waiting for her at her home near Loyal when the friend dropped her off. The friend said Ayon told him Contreras Perez warned her to stay away from other men, allegedly saying “If I ever see them around you, they are going to get hurt and so are you.”
On the night she disappeared, friends said Ayon repeatedly looked out windows at her friend’s house to see if Contreras Perez was outside. A co-worker and friend of Ayon’s told an investigator “that Ayon told her within the past two weeks that the defendant had told Ayon that if she ever cheated on him, he knew where to hide Ayon’s body so that no one would ever find it.” The friend also said Ayon had been dating someone else, and that Ayon believed Contreras Perez had stolen Ayon’s cell phone and a friend’s cell phone from Ayon’s car while it was parked at an Abbotsford convenience store shortly before she disappeared.
On Oct. 19, Contreras Perez’s boss contacted investigators to tell them that Contreras Perez had gone to a local cell phone store on Oct. 3 to report he had lost his company-provided phone and to get a new one. The employer said proper procedure was for an employee to contact management for a new phone and not to go directly to the provider. Surveillance footage at the store showed Contreras Perez was there to get a new phone at 9:57 a.m. on Oct. 3, about six hours after Ayon was last seen.
Detectives who checked Contreras Perez’s Google Dashboard found that on Sept. 26-27, he had searched the internet for videos and information on how to make a firearm silencer. Records show he had also been online trying to find an address for one of Ayon’s friends.
While neither Ayon nor her vehicle have been found, investigators based their first-degree homicide case on the fact that no activity tied to her has occurred since Oct. 3. There has been no activity on any of her online accounts, nor on her bank account. United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement records show no records of her crossing the border into Mexico, nor that she ever had a passport.
The complaint states that no sign exists that Ayon is still alive “despite signifi cant law enforcement efforts.”
