15 Years After Man Went Missing, Police Found Him at Home

A New Mexico missing-person case that had gone cold for nearly 15 years was suddenly revived when a man called 911 and calmly told a dispatcher that he had killed someone long ago, setting off an investigation that would end beneath the floor of a Roswell property where the victim had once lived.

The case, detailed by the YouTube channel EWU Bodycam, centers on Tony Ray Peralta, who approached police after borrowing a phone and making the startling confession. According to the channel’s narrator, officers initially had no way of knowing whether Peralta was telling the truth, intoxicated and confused, or simply seeking attention.

That uncertainty disappeared once detectives began digging where Peralta told them to look.

“I Killed Somebody”

Peralta’s 911 call was remarkably direct.

“Well, I killed somebody,” he told the dispatcher.

The dispatcher tried to keep him on the line and asked for his name, but Peralta disappeared before officers arrived, leading police to search the area until they found him sitting nearby.

When officers approached him, Peralta repeated that the killing had happened a long time ago and said he was tired of hiding it.

“I’m tired of living with the lie,” he said in the bodycam footage, describing guilt that he said had been weighing on him for years.

Peralta appeared sweaty and emotional and admitted that he had been drinking heavily that day.

He also told officers he had taken medication and acknowledged that he was intoxicated, but he remained consistent on one central point: there was a body buried at a house on Fifth Street.

The EWU Bodycam narrator noted that Peralta could not immediately remember the address, the exact year of the killing or even the victim’s full name.

That lack of detail made police understandably skeptical.

Police Wonder If The Confession Is Real

At the station, Peralta told detectives his name was Tony Ray Peralta and repeatedly said the victim had been called “Bill.”

He could not give them much more.

When detectives asked when the murder happened, Peralta said it had been “too long.” When they asked why he had done it, he repeatedly said he did not know.

Police even questioned whether Peralta might be inventing the story.

One officer told him that people sometimes make false confessions because they want attention or notoriety and warned him that wasting police resources could result in charges.

Peralta did not back away.

“There’s a dead body in there, dude,” he said.

He agreed to show officers the property and directed them to a small side structure attached to the house.

He said the body had been buried only inches beneath the floor.

At that point, the strange consistency of his story made it difficult for investigators to dismiss.

Officers Start Digging

Police brought Peralta to the Fifth Street property, where he pointed out the side room and told officers the victim was buried beneath the floorboards on the left side.

The current residents had no apparent connection to the old case and were left trying to understand why police suddenly wanted to search beneath their home.

Peralta still could not answer many basic questions.

He did not remember which direction the body was facing, how the victim was positioned or exactly how deep the grave was.

He said only that officers would find the remains if they lifted the boards and dug.

The EWU Bodycam narrator said investigators eventually removed plywood from the floor and began digging.

Within a short distance, they found what appeared to be a boot.

Then they found bone.

That discovery instantly transformed the confession from a bizarre claim into a possible homicide investigation.

Police stopped the excavation and obtained a search warrant so the property could be processed properly.

Missing Man Had Vanished In 2008

Once detectives began reviewing old police reports, the identity behind Peralta’s vague reference to “Bill” quickly came into focus.

The victim was 69-year-old William Blodgett, who had lived at the Fifth Street house before disappearing in late 2008.

According to EWU Bodycam, Blodgett’s family and girlfriend lost contact with him around Christmas Eve, and he was formally reported missing in early January 2009.

Police conducted a welfare check at the house but found no obvious signs of foul play.

The home contained spoiled food and dead vermin, but there was nothing immediately pointing investigators toward murder.

A cadaver dog was later brought to the property, but the search produced no useful alert.

The case eventually went cold.

That alone would have made Peralta’s confession notable, but detectives then discovered something even more significant: Peralta had been Blodgett’s roommate and tenant at the time.

Peralta Had Been Questioned Years Earlier

EWU Bodycam reported that investigators had actually spoken with Peralta during the original 2009 missing-person investigation.

Witnesses said Blodgett had accused Peralta of stealing his wallet and had tried to evict him shortly before he disappeared.

Police interviewed Peralta, but nothing came from that contact.

Without physical evidence or a body, investigators eventually exhausted their leads.

The case remained dormant for nearly 15 years.

That makes the eventual discovery especially haunting because the answer appears to have been buried only a short distance from where police had searched before.

Peralta had been questioned, a cadaver dog had been used, and the property itself had already been examined, yet the remains stayed hidden beneath the floor.

Human Remains Confirm The Story

After securing the property, investigators found significantly more than the first piece of bone.

The EWU Bodycam narrator said police recovered a rib cage, spine, skull, dentures and other human remains from beneath the side room.

They also found clothing and an old prepaid cellphone inside a jacket pocket.

Those discoveries matched key details from the old missing-person case and supported Peralta’s confession.

The current homeowners were still finding additional bones even after investigators had begun processing the scene, according to the video.

One person told officers that a family member had unknowingly picked up what appeared to be a toe and other bones before realizing what they were.

The discovery was disturbing enough on its own, but detectives were still missing one central detail: how Blodgett had been killed.

Peralta Finally Names The Weapon

Back at the station, Peralta became emotional as detectives confronted him with what they had found.

He repeatedly described Blodgett as a good man.

“He was always good to me,” Peralta said. “And I took his life for no reason.”

When detectives asked what weapon he had used, Peralta initially claimed he could not remember.

Then he changed his answer.

“I killed him with the screwdriver,” he said.

The confession was notable for what it did not include.

Peralta did not try to offer a self-defense claim or point to some larger confrontation that might explain the killing.

Instead, he said he had no excuse.

That is one of the more unsettling parts of the case, because Peralta’s eventual confession was not built around justification. He presented it as something he had done wrong and carried with him until he could no longer tolerate the guilt.

Guilty Plea Ends A 15-Year Mystery

According to EWU Bodycam, Peralta later reached an agreement with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in Blodgett’s death.

He was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

The channel reported that he is serving that sentence at the Guadalupe County Correctional Center in New Mexico.

For Blodgett’s family, the confession finally answered a question that had remained unresolved since 2008.

For police, it closed a case that had once appeared to contain too little evidence to solve.

And for Peralta, the moment that began with a borrowed cellphone and a short 911 call ended with officers digging beneath a home and finding the physical proof of a crime he had kept hidden for nearly a decade and a half.