A Bushwick handyman who bragged of killing and dismembering his boss with a machete in 2006 is facing life in prison after a jury found him guilty of murder on Monday.
It took the panel less than a day of deliberating to convict Luis Perez for killing landlord Bruce Blackwood — whose body has never been found — after hearing tape of a phone call in which Perez detailed how he choked then butchered the man, according to Brooklyn’s top lawyer.
“The jury used the defendant’s own words to convict him of murder,” said District Attorney Ken Thompson.
Blackwood owned several properties around Brooklyn where he employed Perez to do maintenance work — until he discovered in March 2006 that the handyman had swiped his checkbook and used it to pilfer $7,700 from his account, prosecutors said.
Blackwood headed to Perez’s house to confront him, and was never seen or heard from again, they said.
But in a secretly recorded 2011 conversation with his daughter, Perez claimed that he choked the 55-year-old to death then disposed of the body by chopping it up with a machete and throwing away the pieces in plastic bags. He then cleaned the grizzly scene with hospital-grade bleach, according to the tape.
“It’s not about committing the perfect crime, it’s just about how well you clean it up,” Perez told his offspring.
Perez, who had a criminal history, told his daughter he killed Blackwood to avoid ending up back behind bars. But he ended up serving two years for stealing the checks anyway, and now he is facing 25 years to life in prison for murder.
Perez will learn his fate at a sentencing on Oct. 13.
