Riley Perez
Appearances
Infamous
Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 4
Yeah, no one's just going to ask you that. The main reason they ask that question is because they want to make sure you're not a child molester or you're not a rat. So, yeah, your folks, the folks you run with, they're going to want to know. You give them your paperwork, they see it. Now, granted, my paperwork was on the cover of L.A. Times.
Infamous
Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 4
There are guys there with life sentences, 40-year sentences. So, you know, there's very few Boy Scouts just walking around. And daily violence exists.
Infamous
Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 4
Comical. I mean, yeah, he's fish out of water and he realizes that the life he had, even with him just being in a city jail that he was in initially, that probably made his skin crawl. Yeah, I know the feeling, Joe, but just, you know, just adapt, buddy. You expect him to be running up the walls, trying to control the narrative initially, trying to hold on to folks that he's associated with.
Infamous
Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 4
You know, I'm innocent. I tell you, I'm innocent. So I understand. At that point, it's sink or swim. I guess the biggest thing is you don't want to lose yourself in there. But how do I maintain my individuality in a place where everything is uniformed and rules are set? Long way before I ever came here, rules are set. How do I keep my individuality?
Infamous
Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 4
How do I keep my humanity and not just turn into some ogre? And that's a balancing act. What you're doing inside is what you're going to be doing when you come out. There are dudes that hit the yard and they're just slinging dope and the gambling, the this, the that. Okay, well, you're conditioned. You've conditioned yourself. He's such a bad guy. I did a good thing. I never thought in that way.
Infamous
Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 4
I still don't. He was my victim. I was the perpetrator.
Infamous
Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 4
Will says he never said that because why would he?
Infamous
Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 4
Darnell Riley Perez. Will my family call me Riley? But I'll answer to anything.
Infamous
Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 4
I drive up my driveway as I do every day. I always carried a pistol. 38 snub nose was my go-to gun. Don't have to worry about, you know, even if you dropped it, it's not just going to fire by itself. So every day I got the same routine, get out the car, the gun's already secured in your waist. But this day, at that moment, for whatever reason, I didn't put the gun in my waist.
Infamous
Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 4
So as I step out of my car, I see the van racing up my driveway. For a second, I thought maybe it's a hit. I was about to reach for my gun or run because I had some exit points I could have made. The van stops at a decent enough distance, and I see the passenger, older white guy. I see him draw his pistol, and then I see the driver. He looks to be Hispanic, younger guy.
Infamous
Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 4
And they're screaming something, but it's like I couldn't hear. And then as I look past them, my eyes focus past them, I see the cavalry coming up the driveway. And that's when I realize, okay, it's the cops. Then, like, my hearing restored. And I can hear them now, freeze, freeze, police, police. The younger guy, who was the driver of the minivan, he walks towards me.
Infamous
Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 4
He had never pulled his gun. The passenger, the older white guy, he kept his gun trained on me. And the younger guy said, turn around. They put me in the back of the minivan, and they start with the questions. Are you Darnell Riley? I'm just looking at him, and they kept asking. And then they show me the warrant. Are you Darnell Riley? I'm like, yeah, well, my name is Darnell Riley Perez.
Infamous
Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 4
They're like, yeah, yeah, whatever, whatever. They're like, who are you guys? We're U.S. Marshals. So I say, what is this for? We don't know. We're just body baggers. We're just here to grab you. U.S. Marshals, I guess, had teamed up with the LAPD to clear a backlog of high-value warrants they had to execute. I just happened to be one of them.
Infamous
Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 4
My guy tells me, you know, we don't know what it's for, but, you know, we're going to work on bail.
Infamous
Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 4
I called another guy, and once again, no one knew what exactly I had been arrested for. I called my girlfriend at the time who had lived with me. I didn't know that they had brought her down as well, and she was in the interrogation room next to me. And she tells me, yeah, they say this is because you robbed Joe Francis. So now I knew what I was in for.
Infamous
Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 4
Out of all the possibilities of what it could have been for, that was like the last thing on my list. So now I know, okay, we got to fight.
Infamous
Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 4
I'm innocent. I know what you're talking about. I have to play that part. I knew I was going to have to sit for a while and fight this case out.
Infamous
Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 4
Two counts of kidnapping, home invasion, robbery, extortion, two kidnapping charges. The kidnap for ransom held a penalty of life without parole. Two life sentences, yeah. I mean, how do you do one life sentence?
Infamous
Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 4
No, didn't have time for that. It would have been a wasted emotion. I was sitting in the county jail with gangbangers rioting daily, facing the real potential of death every day while still waging this war in the courts where if I lose, I go away for life. So, yeah, wondering who's not going to want me back in their club was the farthest thing from my mind. It was, how am I going to survive this?
Infamous
Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 4
Stale courtroom, wood panel walls. The judge was about 800 years old. You know, tried and tested veteran of the legal system.
Infamous
Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 4
Ron asked me, you know, what do you want to start? I said, give me probation. He's like, yeah, they're not going to go for that. I said, all right, seven. He said, well, they're looking at 13. So now it's the back and forth. We'll say eight. They'll come back maybe at 10.
Infamous
Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 4
First off, the potential that I could be busted, that always existed. I did the crime. So in the negotiating and talking with Ron in our private talks, his question to me is, what can you live with? OK, well, we wanted something in the single digit range. So getting to 10 years, eight months, that was his goal once we were in the bargaining stage. I was okay with it because I did the crime.
Infamous
Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 4
After sitting in jail for a year and witnessing the insane asylum, being involved in riots that are gang-based, that have nothing to do with you, just get me to a point where the amount of time that I'm gonna do, I can still Have a life afterwards. I won't be an old man walking the prison yard coming out with very few options left in life.
Infamous
Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 2 I Scroll Back for Part 1
being around town, involved in underworld behavior since a teen. Folks knew me. I knew any and everyone that was needed to know to be in the hot spots.
Infamous
Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 2 I Scroll Back for Part 1
Paris, Nikki, Tara Reid. She was still a young commodity and, you know, bankable in films. Leo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire.
Infamous
Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 2 I Scroll Back for Part 1
He was, you know, in the media looked at as the next Hugh Hefner because he seems like he had caught lightning in a bottle. He'd hang out. I'd see him at the club. You'd see him at a restaurant. He'd come by my buddy's gym.
Infamous
Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 2 I Scroll Back for Part 1
He would round up enough folks to get them back to his place for after hours because he's trying to let folks know, you know, I'm the man, I'm the man here, I'm the go-to man. Everyone's going to take the free goodies, the alcohol, and a place to hang out and party and rub elbows and exchange lies.
Infamous
Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 2 I Scroll Back for Part 1
I had already been a part of a couple clubs, you know, behind the scenes, where I was on the off-the-books payroll. I'll get my payment in the brown bags, and I always got a table there.
Infamous
Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 2 I Scroll Back for Part 1
He knows that if I wanted to kill him, it would have already been done.
Infamous
Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 1
Now, I had a gun, and if you have a gun, the gun has one purpose, to kill him. Was I prepared to kill him? Yes.
Infamous
Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 1
If you entered properly, you would enter through the gate in your car. You'd pull up a driveway that's on a pretty steep incline.
Infamous
Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 1
I walk through the bottom portion, making sure no one's there. Go up the steps, master bedroom, huge walk-in closet, second bedroom, which was a little gym that he had set up. I'm looking for the safe, yeah, but maybe it's not in a safe, maybe it's in a drawer. Looking for a little lockbox, anything that could lead me to possible mini-DV tapes that would fit in the camcorder.
Infamous
Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 1
Crazy enough, the smaller of the safes was open, so I don't have to fidget with it and try to come up with a combination. I open it. There's a couple of tapes in there, mini DV tapes. I'll take those with me, put those in the bag.
Infamous
Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 1
It had gained attention when it was profiled in Sex and the City. It was called the rabbit or what is it, a pink rabbit. I grabbed one. I'll put this to use.
Infamous
Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 1
My name is Joe Francis. I'm a boy gone wild, and I like it up the ass.