Hi, everyone, I'm Keith Morrison, and this is Talking Dateline.

Today, I'm here with Lester Holt and Dan Slepian to talk about their episode, which is called The Ruse.

If you haven't seen The Ruse, you can find it in the Dateline podcast feed.

So go there, listen to it, stream it on Peacock, if you wish, and then come right back

here.

To recap, Tom Perez, Jr., called police in August of 2018 to report his father missing.

And before long, police began to suspect that Tom was involved in his dad's disappearance,

that they brought him in for an interrogation. It lasted 17 hours and resulted in Tom confessing to his father's murder.

The big twist was that Tom Perez walked back into his wife a few hours later, alive and well.

And Tom had falsely confessed for this talking

dateline we have a podcast exclusive clip from interrogation expert steve kleinman and then uh lester and

dan will answer some of your questions from social media as well um so yeah a false confession case

they feature in a lot of our deadline cases.

How did this one happen when actually the victim wasn't a victim at all?

Yeah, I mean, that's the amazing thing. This is an amazing crime story, except for the fact that

there was no crime. And that's what we ultimately get to in this hour.

But this is a case.

Guy, you know, picks up the phone and calls the police station in his town, Fontana, California.

And says, look, my pop didn't come home last night.

He went out to pick up the mail down the street.

He, you know, his keys are here.

His wallet is here.

...