Clinton Neighbor Accused of Killing Wife Admits Longtime Affair

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. – The neighbor of Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton who is accused of murdering his wife admitted to police he had a 10-year affair with another woman and had sent her flowers two days before his wife was shot.

According to court papers released Friday, disbarred lawyer Carlos Perez-Olivo also told investigators that the day of his wife's killing, Nov. 18, 2006, was the other woman's birthday.

Perez-Olivo, who lives in Chappaqua on the same cul-de-sac as the Clintons, was arrested in December in what a prosecutor called a chilling "execution" of his wife, Peggy, more than a year earlier.

He has pleaded not guilty and is being held on $1 million bail. The papers filed by the district attorney's office were released after a brief session in Westchester County Court. Perez-Olivo, his hands cuffed behind him, did not speak.

He contends his 55-year-old wife was killed by an assailant who forced their car off a dark road near Chappaqua and shot her in the head and him in the abdomen. He has suggested the killer was perhaps hired by a dissatisfied client.

Prosecutors have never commented on a motive for the killing, and Lucien Chalfen, spokesman for District Attorney Janet DiFiore, would not comment Friday about the released evidence.

The statements came when Perez-Olivo was interviewed by police 11 days after the shooting, the documents indicate.

Perez-Olivo told police he also had other "small" affairs and his wife didn't know of the long affair with the Georgia woman. He also admitted he "made a hell of a lot more money than I said on my taxes."

Perez-Olivo had been disbarred three months before the shooting for refusing to return unearned funds to clients.

Perez-Olivo's lawyer, Robert Buckley, insisted Friday that the couple was happily married and said affairs should have no bearing on the case.

At the time of the killing, a Clinton spokesman said the couple were "saddened" at their neighbor's death. The shooting had no apparent effect on security at the Clinton home.