After Perkins's release he left Ohio and went back to Texas. On May 6, 1991, Hattie Wilson, 79, and her 44 year old niece Shirley Douglas were found strangled in the former's Fort Worth apartment and Douglas was raped. Perkins was then dating Wilson's granddaughter. In 1993, he was ordered to be sent back to prison in Ohio for violating the terms of his parole, as they required him to attend sex offender rehabilitation classes which he had failed to do. Perkins spent almost seven years behind bars until being paroled again in 2000 and returning to Texas to work for his father and stepmother's trucking business as a dump truck driver. Neither of them ever knew he was suspected in three murders, but his half-sister Shirley Brooks claimed her mother would never have given him a second chance if she'd been aware of that.

On December 4, Gertie Perkins, his 64 year old stepmother, was supposed to pick up her grandson from school but never showed up and was reported missing. When police searched her home, they found the phone was unplugged, carpeting ripped out, blood stains, and several missing bedsheets. Perkins hocked her wedding ring at a pawnshop for $150 the same day and he was arrested the following day for having failed to register as a sex offender. He also paid a known crack user $200 to cash two checks valued at a total of $1,300 which had been written from the Perkins’ trucking business account. He was extensively grilled by police due to his prior history and ultimately confessed to killing Gertie; he showed them to her Cadillac Sedan de Ville where her body was stuffed in the trunk. Gertie's head and mouth were bruised and she had strangulation marks on her neck that appeared to have been caused by a phone cord.