GIOVANNI GONZALEZ - 5 yo (2008) - Lynn MA

U.S. Dad Claims To Have Murdered 5-Yr.-Old Son But Cops Don't Believe Him



http://www.citynews.ca/news/news_31399.aspx

This missing/endangered child's story will be interesting to watch. Dad confessed but authorties do not believe him. He's been missing since August of 2008

DOB: May 1, 2003
Missing: Aug 15, 2008
Age Now: 5
Sex: Male
Race: Hispanic
Hair: Black
Eyes: Brown
Height: 4′ 1″ (124 cm)
Weight: 40 lbs (18 kg)
Missing From: LYNN
MA
United States

Giovanni was last seen on August 15, 2008 at approximately 4:00 p.m. He may still be in the local area or may have traveled to Puerto Rico. Giovanni has a small scar above his eyebrow. He was last seen wearing blue jeans, a red t-shirt, and black Spiderman sandals.

OMG sus! This makes me scared to let my Bama go to her "other" family's house this weekend. Her biological sperm donor is the same kind of crazy! :shock: I feel a little better that he's not allowed alone with her.
God bless this poor baby, and Dear Lord, please be with his mother until you bring this child back to her. This guy is just sick.....to willingly go to jail ....FOR MURDERING HIS OWN CHILD....just to torment the mother. What a looney toon.

MandiJones wrote:OMG sus! This makes me scared to let my Bama go to her "other" family's house this weekend. Her biological sperm donor is the same kind of crazy! :shock: I feel a little better that he's not allowed alone with her.
God bless this poor baby, and Dear Lord, please be with his mother until you bring this child back to her. This guy is just sick.....to willingly go to jail ....FOR MURDERING HIS OWN CHILD....just to torment the mother. What a looney toon.

Sweetie, I'll be praying for you and I have an idea how you feel...even having my 17 y/o son at his father's house (father is just as looney) gave me stomachaches...My ex would and has done some outrageous things just to torment me and I'm sure he will continue to do so in the future...

http://www.itemlive.com/articles/2009/06/01/news/news01.txt


By Robin Kaminski / The Daily Item
LYNN - Daisy Colon refuses to give up hope.

"Driven by a mother's instinct to find her child, Colon is optimistic that a newly created $7,000 reward will help bring her five-year-old son Giovanni Gonzalez, who has been missing since Aug. 16, 2008, home.

"I can feel that he is out there and that someone is holding him captive, because I have that sense, that feeling, that something is wrong," she said. "I was sitting on my bed the other day and I could feel that he was out there, crying. Not knowing is the worst thing that can happen to a person, especially a mother."

...."

THE WHOLE WORLD knows the story of a delusional man who called himself
Clark Rockefeller and kidnapped his daughter from a high-end Boston
neighborhood.
Someone, somewhere in the world,
must know what happened to Giovanni Gonzalez, a 5-year-old boy who was
last seen with his father last August in Lynn. The father told a Globe
reporter he killed his son, but refuses to talk about it to law
enforcement authorities."I
think about this case every day," said Essex District Attorney Jonathan
Blodgett, who is working with Lynn detectives and State Police to solve
the mystery of the little boy's disappearance. "Everyone in law
enforcement is hoping for one lucky break that will help us come to the
truth. It's a truth-finding mission."
The
disappearance of Giovanni, who was 4 feet tall and wearing a red shirt
and Spiderman sandals when he was last seen, continues to generate
local coverage. But it's nothing like the glut of attention paid to
another parental kidnapping case, last July's snatching of a little
girl from a Back Bay street.
Wealth
and celebrity - even when it's fantasy conjured up by a con man - have
a way of capturing media hearts and the public's imagination.
For
years, Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter posed as a member of the
illustrious Rockefeller family, duping acquaintances and his
Harvard-educated wife. When he took off with 7-year-old Reigh, during a
supervised visit after a bitter divorce, the child's kidnapping touched
off an international manhunt. Father and daughter were found in
Baltimore six days later. The girl was unharmed.
Gerhartsreiter's
just-completed trial was a media extravaganza. His lawyers argued that
he was legally insane at the time of the abduction. On Friday, a jury
found him guilty.
His life
of manipulation and illusion may hold other dark mysteries.
Gerhartsreiter could also be charged in connection with the
disappearance of a California couple nearly 25 years ago. One of
Rockefeller's previous aliases, Christopher Chichester, was identified
by California investigators as a "person of interest" in the 1985
disappearance and presumed death of Linda and John Sohus in San Marino.
But what can be darker than the circumstances surrounding Giovanni Gonzalez's disappearance?
The
boy vanished during a weekend visit with his father, Ernesto L.
Gonzalez Jr. His mother, Daisy Colon of East Boston, reported her son
missing on Aug. 17 after she went to Gonzalez's apartment to pick up
her son.
Last November, the
boy's father offered a chilling confession to Globe reporter Maria
Sacchetti. He said he stabbed his son, dismembered his body, and
disposed of the remains in three different trash bins near his
apartment in Lynn. He was indicted in December on charges of parental
kidnapping and willfully misleading a person in the furtherance of a
continuing investigation. He pleaded innocent and is being held without
bail in Essex County jail in Middleton.
Gonzalez won't speak to law enforcement officials, and so far police have been unable to corroborate his terrible story.
Trash
bins were searched. Police helicopters flew over the area with
infra-red cameras. Police dogs sniffed assorted bodies of water. Based
on scripture quoted by Gonzalez, police searched nearby cemeteries. A
new batch of specimens was recently sent out for DNA testing, and if it
comes back positive Gonzalez is expected to be charged with murder.
Police
continue to search for signs of the boy and recently offered a $7,000
reward for tips leading to his whereabouts. His mother continues to
pray for his safe return.
"We are doing everything in our power to find him . . . We want closure for his mother," said the district attorney.
Police
and prosecutors speak daily to Giovanni's mother, who is tortured by
guilt. She told the Globe that even though things between her and
Giovanni's father were not "100 percent," she urged him to get together
with his son.
Their relationship "was not about me," she said. "It was about a little boy who wanted his father in his life."
That
is a universal yearning. It led Giovanni Gonzalez to a fate the world
should care about, even though he was not rich or famous.

Knowing she could hear the worst news ever about
her child, Daisy Colon is resolutely hoping for the best in her
determination to find her son, Giovanni, alive.

Despite a murder confession by the boy's father, Colon remains convinced that Ernesto
Gonzalez and an accomplice kidnapped the boy so that Gonzalez could
have sole custody of his 6-year-old son.

Police have not commented on that theory and Gonzalez, 37, has spent nearly a year in
the Essex County House of Correction charged with kidnapping and lying
to police.

"He confessed he killed him but it's a trick. They've
looked around, through the trash and haven't found anything. He threw a
a false thing out there. A lot of people believed it but he's a liar.
He is just trying to hurt me more," Colon said during a July 30
interview.

Gonzalez did not answer her phone calls or his door
bell when Colon went to his downtown Lynn apartment building on Sunday,
Aug. 17, 2008 to pick her son up after a weekend visit with Gonzalez.

Hoping father and son were on their way home from a trip to the mall or park,
Colon waited until 8 p.m. to call police who had to summon firefighters
to enter Gonzalez' apartment through a window. Officers found him
standing in the dark in his underwear. Giovanni was not there.

Police charged Gonzalez with child endangerment when he refused to reveal the
boy's whereabouts. Searches across the city failed to locate the boy
but Colon insists she saw her son with a man walking up a path from
Essex Street to the top of High Rock Tower on a Sunday a month and a
half after she dropped him off at Gonzalez' building.

"All I could see was his back. What caught my attention was he was helping Giovanni up the hill."

Colon pulled her car to the curb and without grabbing her purse or rolling up
her windows, ran after the pair. She did not find the pair but she
called police who, she said, scoured High Rock Park and the surrounding
neighborhoods before locating a man and boy in Keaney Park. The man
said he and the boy had been in High Rock Park earlier but Colon
insisted the man's khaki clothing did not match the description of the
man she saw walking the boy.

"You're telling me I'm confusing a man with a white Polo shirt and jeans?" she asked.

Giovanni Gonzalez' disappearance while in his father's care came after a month
of seemingly successful reconciliation with Ernesto Gonzalez.

Colon and Gonzalez lived together for two years with their infant son before
separating in 2005. Colon said Gonzalez' violent outbursts and
controlling personality reached a boiling point on July 4 of that year.

"He grabbed a chair, swung it. Thank God it hit something else," she said.

After years apart, Colon received a Suffolk Probate court correspondence in
June 2008 outlining Gonzalez' interest in seeing his son.

"I told him, 'Prove to me you are not going to show up in his life then disappear.'"

Gonzalez, a meat packing plant worker with a criminal record dating back to his youth, started taking steps to meet her demands.

By July, he established a pattern of calling Colon and Giovanni on a
regular basis and keeping his word when he made commitments to the
pair. That behavior set the stage for Colon to approve overnight visits
to Gonzalez' Lynn apartment on Aug. 1 and Aug. 7. The visits went well:
Father and son took trips to a mall and a park and watched movies
together.

But Giovanni's second visit left Colon concerned. The
boy came back to her East Boston apartment "pretending to be someone
else" and told her about plans to visit his brother in Puerto Rico.
When the boy mentioned the possibility of his father and mother
reuniting, Colon called Gonzalez and sought assurances that he was not
giving Giovanni false hopes.

Looking back, Colon thinks Gonzalez
was setting the stage for Giovanni's abduction by preparing him to
answer to a false name. As he packed for his Aug. 15 visit with his
father, Colon saw Giovanni stuff considerably more clothes than he
needed for a weekend visit into his suitcase.

"He said, 'I've got to pack a lot of clothes.' I took half of them out.'"

That Friday was the last day Colon spoke with her son. Gonzalez' neighbors
told police they saw father and son playing ball that Saturday and
heard Gonzalez swear at the boy when the ball went astray. Three months
later, one day before Thanksgiving, Gonzalez in a published confession
said he stabbed the boy in a fit of rage on Aug. 17, dismembered his
body in the apartment bathtub and threw the body parts wrapped in trash
bags in Dumpsters across Lynn.

Following an initial search after Giovanni's disappearance, police searched the 2 Brightwood Terrace
apartment after the confession and again this month. Their findings
remain sealed by order of a judge.

For her part, Colon continues to solicit any help she can get in finding her son. She combined $1,600
in money she raised with $400 of her own money to post a reward. With
Lynn Police Det. Capt. Mark O'Toole's help, she contacted a California
foundation that added $5,000 to the reward. That commitment is only
good through November but she is not giving up her search for Giovanni.

"My hope is there. I have faith. I go to church more. My (two and a half
year old) daughter helps me and my mother is my No. 1 supporter. I just
want them to find him. I know he's alive."

A year ago today, Giovanni Gonzalez was supposed to go home with his mother.
Instead, the little boy who vanished during a weekend visit with
his father, Ernesto Gonzalez in Lynn, has been the subject of a
yearlong search and an infuriating mystery. Gonzalez was arrested, and
confessed in November to killing the boy in a jailhouse interview with the Globe.

But since then, the 37-year-old former meatpacker has pleaded not
guilty to charges of parental kidnapping and lying to law enforcement.
He has kept silent, locked up for 23 hours a day in a special
segregation unit in Essex County Jail in Middleton, with one hour for
recreation, as authorities await the results of scientific testing on
samples from his apartment.

"This whole investigation, we’re sparing no effort, no expense,"
said Essex District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett. "It’s still a search
for the truth."


Earlier this month, Gonzalez's lawyer Lawrence McGuire waived his
client's right to a speedy trial pending the outcome of scientific
testing that is part of the investigation, according to assistant clerk
Richard Deschamps and the District Attorney's office. The next hearing
is Sept. 3 in Essex Superior Court in Salem.

After Gonzalez's confession, authorities executed another search
warrant at his Brightwood Terrace apartment and have sent samples for
scientific testing with the State Police and Orchid Cellmark in Texas,
a private DNA testing company that has conducted testing in other
high-profile child disappearances, including the JonBenet Ramsey case.

Giovanni's mother and authorities are still appealing to the public for
any information about his disappearance. His mother hopes that he is
still alive, and is publicizing a $7,000 reward for his return.
Tonight, she planned a prayer ceremony at her home for him, deciding
against holding a candlelight vigil.

"To me, having a vigil is like saying he is dead," said Daisy Colon, who lives in East Boston, today. "He’s not dead for me."

Ernesto Gonzalez's lawyer, Lawrence McGuire, was out of the office and could not be reached for comment.

The episode began during a weekend visit with Gonzalez that started
Aug. 15, 2008. He had seen the boy only sporadically in the past few
years, but had recently had him for two visits without incident,
according to the police report.

Giovanni Gonzalez, who turned six in May, loved Superman and
Spiderman, and was supposed to have started kindergarten last fall, was
last seen with his father on Saturday, Aug. 16, 2008.

Colon arrived to pick him up the next day at 4 p.m., as scheduled,
but Ernesto Gonzalez did not answer her phone calls, which grew
increasingly frantic. He did not answer when she pounded on the door.
Finally, when fire officials entered through a second-floor window and
found Ernesto Gonzalez, alone, with a cut on his hand, Gonzalez said he
had never had the boy.

Gonzalez was arrested and has been
held without bail ever since. He has pleaded not guilty to charges of
parental kidnapping, which is punished by up to a year in the House of
Correction, and lying to a law enforcement officer, a felony punishable
by up to 10 years in state prison.

A few months ago, jail officials moved him to the "administrative
segregation" unit at Essex County jail in Middleton for his own
protection, because he is a high-profile inmate, said Paul Fleming,
spokesman for the Essex County Sheriff's Department. Gonzalez is
confined to his own cell, 23 hours a day, with one hour for recreation.

It has been one year since Giovanni Gonzalez was reported missing.
The Lynn, Massachusetts boy, 5-years-old at the time, disappeared
during a weekend visit with his father. A DNA testing company that has
worked on a number of high profile cases across the nation is now
trying to solve this mystery.
"It's just hard," said Daisy Colon, trying to hold back tears.
It's been a year of waiting, hoping, and crying for Colon - a year since she last saw her son Giovanni Gonzalez.
Colon dropped 5 year old Giovanni off at his father Ernesto Gonzalez's apartment in Lynn, August 15, 2008.
When she went back to pick him up two days later, the boy was gone.
"It's not easy knowing that your son is somewhere and that you don't have any clue of where he is," Colon said.
Despite an exhaustive search of dumpsters, woods, and a pond in Lynn and beyond, the boy hasn't been seen since.
"We have followed leads from Lynn to Lawrence to Florida to Puerto
Rico, back to Florida so we're very intense in pursuing any information
that we have,"
Essex County District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett said.
Ernesto Gonzalez has been indicted for parental kidnapping and lying to police.
He remains in prison awaiting trial.
In a jailhouse interview last November, he allegedly confessed to a Boston Globe reporter that he killed his son.
"I cannot comment on that. Again, any information we have, any theories are beingpursued vigorously," Blodgett said.
Blodgett says though it's a year later, the case remains a top priority.
"We're going to dig and continue to dig and do the best we can to
get to the truth but there's no time clock on investigations,
particularly investigations of this magnitude. There's a child out
there that's missing," he said.
Back to Daisy Colon who stood on the steps outside her East Boston
home and showed us a photo collage she made on Giovanni's 6th birthday
in May.
"I feel that he's alive. There's no doubt in my mind," she said.
Colon was planning to hold a prayer vigil at her home tonight.
There is a $7000 reward for anyone who has information that can help locate the boy.
Blodgett says he's hoping some DNA samples will help lead investigators to a resolution.
They have been sent to the state police crime lab, others to a nationally known lab called CellMark Diagnostics.
It's the same lab that tested samples in the Jon Benet Ramsey and OJ cases.

The father of a missing 6-year-old
boy has been cleared to stand trial for allegedly kidnapping his son
and for lying to Lynn police when they started searching for the child
in August 2008.

The boy, Giovanni Gonzalez, has not been seen since Aug. 16, 2008,
when he was at his father's apartment on Brightwood Terrace in Lynn.
The father, Ernesto Gonzalez, has refused to disclose to authorities
where his son is, but he told a Globe reporter in 2008 that he had murdered his son.

In a telephone interview today, the boy's mother said she remains steadfast in her belief that Giovanni is alive.

"I know he is alive,'' said Daisy Colon, who lives in East Boston.
She said her hope springs in part
from her chance encounter with a boy who was being escorted by a man on
a Lynn street in October 2008. She said she is certain it was her son
and that she rushed to get police help immediately after spotting her
son, but a police search that day failed to locate her son, or the man.

"I know my son is alive,'' she said.

Colon was in court on Wednesday when her one-time boyfriend was
found competent to stand trial. Since his arrest in 2008, Colon has
attended nearly every court hearing. She said she just wants Gonzalez
to tell where her son is, and as far as she is concerned he can be set
free once he does that.

"All I care for is my son,'' she said. She also urged the person who
she believes now has her son to "put him on a bus and send him on his
way home, or leave in the mall, or leave him in the hospital – anywhere
we can get him.''

Gonzalez has not been charged with murder. Steve O'Connell, a
spokesman for Essex District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett, whose office
has led numerous land and water searches in the Lynn area, said today
the investigation is still open and that the search for the boy has not
ended.

Gonzalez has pleaded not guilty to the charges he currently faces and is being held without bail.

Gonzalez's trial in Essex Superior Court has been on hold while the
one-time employee of a Lynn meatpacking company underwent a
psychological assessment to determine whether he was mentally competent
to stand trial.

The experts reported to the court earlier this week that Gonzalez can stand trial, O'Connnell said.

Gonzalez's attorney, Lawrence McGuire, did not return a telephone call today.

Gonzalez is due back in court Feb. 3.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Lynn Police at
781-595-2000 or State police detectives assigned to Blodgett's office
at 978-745-8908

LYNN - It's time for the father of missing Giovanni Gonzalez to "just talk," the boy's frustrated mother said Tuesday.



Daisy
Colon sat in Essex Superior Court watching as the boy's father,
Ernesto, stood listening silently as his attorney argued to keep
evidence seized in searches of Gonzalez' Lynn apartment from being
admitted in Gonzalez' yet-to-be scheduled trial.

After Justice
John Lu took Lawrence McGuire's motions under advisement and set a
March 8 date for ruling on them, Gonzalez walked within feet of Colon
on his way out of the courtroom.

"It's frustrating," Colon said following Gonzalez' appearance. "I just want him to end it and just talk."

Colon,
an East Boston resident, is convinced her son is alive and continues
working with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to
search for him.

Gonzalez, 38, has pleaded innocent to charges of
willfully lying to police and kidnapping. He claimed on Nov. 26, 2008
in a published confession that he lost his temper and killed the boy,
then chopped up his body and disposed of the pieces in Dumpsters around
Lynn.
Prosecutors and police have not confirmed
Gonzalez' account of the boy's disappearance or debunked it. Colon has
repeatedly said she thinks he is lying. Police searched Gonzalez' 2
Brightwood Terrace apartment four times in 2008 and 2009 and sent
evidence gathered during searches to a firm specializing in genetic
evidence analysis.

McGuire asked Lu on Tuesday to keep evidence
gathered in the searches from being admitted as evidence in Gonzalez'
trial. He argued the affidavits - the documents police drafted
outlining to a judge the reasons for the searches - were "defective
because police had no probable cause" to search Gonzalez' apartment
beginning on Aug. 17, 2008.

McGuire challenged Colon's claim
that she spoke by cell phone with Gonzalez on August 15, the day she
said she dropped her son off at his father's apartment. Gonzalez
claimed he had not spoken to Colon since August 10.

"She said it was the defendant but there is no evidence of that," McGuire told Lu.



Assistant
District Attorney Jean Curran said police entered the apartment with
firefighters' help after Colon told them she could not reach Gonzalez
and could not get him to answer his door although she said she had
arranged with him to pick the boy up.

"Based upon the
information known to officers at that time, there was concern for the
child, concern there was some criminal activity involved, whether the
child was missing or the child was dead. They were looking for evidence
indicating the whereabouts of the child," Curran said.

Police
reports indicate officers found Ernesto Gonzalez inside his apartment
wearing only his underwear with the lights turned off. He denied
knowledge of his son's whereabouts when questioned by police and was
charged with child endangerment. That charge was eventually dropped and
replaced with the kidnapping and lying to police charges.

A Superior Court judge has ruled against a
defense lawyer's attempt to prevent evidence gathered from the
apartment of Ernesto L. Gonzalez, the Lynn father charged with parental
kidnapping and willfully misleading a person in the investigation
involving the disappearance of his 5-year-old son in 2008, from being
introduced at his trial.



Defense lawyer Lawrence J. McGuire
argued at a preliminary trial hearing last month that the five searches
at his 2 Brightwood Terrace violated his client's rights and the
warrants failed to establish probable cause to search the apartment and
seize his property.

Judge John T. Lu in his one-page ruling
handed down Monday said "police concerns about the child's safety and
obvious inculpatory evidence related the defendant, Mr. Gonzalez,
provided ample probable cause for the issuance of the search warrants"
and therefore the motions are denied.

Seized from the apartment was information on a computer along with DNA specimens which included
blood on a knife and blood on a floorboard.

Gonzalez, 37, in a jailhouse confession in November of 2008 claimed he stabbed his son,
Giovanni Gonzalez, with a kitchen knife because he was misbehaving. He
said he then put his son's body in the bathtub and dismembered it on
Aug. 17 of that year. He confessed to disposing of the body in six
grocery bags, which he said were placed inside a black duffel bag with
the word "Rollerblade" on it. He confessed he then rode his bike to
three different locations in Lynn and disposed of the body parts in
Dumpsters.

Authorities searched the Dumpsters, but found no remains.

Five-year-old Giovanni, who was living in East Boston with his mother Daisy Colon,
was reported missing to police on Aug. 17 by Colon after she went to
pick her son up from a pre-arranged weekend with his father.

Ernesto Gonzalez told police he had not seen his son since the previous week,
but Colon insisted she had dropped her son at Gonzalez' Brightwood
Terrace apartment on Friday, Aug. 14.

She has believed that his confession was trick. However, the boy has yet to be found.

Gonzalez has pleaded innocent to the charges lodged against him. He remains held without bail pending the outcome of his case.

A new defense attorney, Christopher Skinner, from the Committee of Public
Offenders, will be filing his appearance at the next scheduled court
date on March 29. He was unavailable for today's hearing. McGuire has
retired from the committee.

Authorities investigating the 2008 disappearance of Giovanni Gonzalez
have discovered the boy’s blood throughout his father’s apartment in
Lynn, on a red-handled knife, on a piece of wood flooring, on the
bathroom threshold, and on the cap to a bottle of pine-scented cleaner.
The latest evidence, outlined in
court documents in January, deepens the mystery about what happened to
the boy, who would turn 7 tomorrow.Giovanni vanished in August 2008 during a
weekend visit with his father, Ernesto Gonzalez. Three months later,
Gonzalez said in a jailhouse interview with the Globe that he had
stabbed the boy with a red-handled knife, dismembered his body in the
bathtub, and scattered the remains in three trash bins in the city.
It is unclear what impact the new
evidence will have on the case. Despite his confession, Gonzalez has
pleaded not guilty in Essex Superior Court in Salem and is being held
without bail in Essex County Jail in Middletonon
charges of parental kidnapping and misleading police.
It is too soon to draw conclu sions, said
Essex District Attorney Jonathan W. Blodgett. Authorities are still
awaiting test results on other items seized from Gonzalez’s apartment,
and they have not upgraded the charges against the 38-year-old former
meatpacker.
“This has been a
very laborious process,’’ said Blodgett, who is overseeing the case
with Assistant District Attorney Jean Curran. “We’re doing everything
we can to make sure that we have all the evidence evaluated. I certainly
cannot answer the question about whether the charge will be upgraded.
That’s a possibility, but we can’t say that this time. We want to have
all the testing back.’’
In
East Boston, Giovanni’s mother, Daisy Colon, is holding out hope that
her son is alive.
Colon
discounted the discovery of Giovanni’s blood, saying the energetic boy
often bled from cuts received while playing or riding his bicycle. The
week before he visited his father, she said, he suffered a nosebleed.
She said she feared that investigators
were giving up on the search for the boy.
“I feel like a lot of people have given
up,’’ Colon said. “All the fliers that I put out, people have taken them
down. You go to Lynn now, and you hardly see any of those fliers. It’s
just frustrating.’’
Blodgett
said authorities are investigating all leads. But lately the district
attorney’s office has focused on scientific testing being conducted by
the State Police crime laboratory and a private laboratory in Texas,
which has dragged on for more than a year. Because a Superior Court
judge has impounded the results of search warrants and other evidence,
many of the case’s details remain a mystery.
On the day Gonzalez confessed in November
2008, a State Police chemist said she found Giovanni’s blood on the cap
from the cleaner, according to information that was made public in
court documents filed in January.
Two days after the confession, investigators swept Gonzalez’s apartment
again, seizing several knives, bathtub tiles, drainpipes, two nylon
bags, 10 pieces of wood flooring, DVDs, and a bicycle. Many of the items
were sent to public and private laboratories for testing.
According to the court documents, a
State Police DNA analyst determined in March 2009 that Giovanni’s blood
was on a red-handled knife and a piece of wood floor in Gonzalez’s
apartment. In April 2009, an analyst for Orchid Cellmark Laboratories, a
private laboratory in Texas, found Giovanni’s blood on the bathroom
threshold.Asked why
investigators did not find the knife and other evidence during the
initial searches, Blodgett said that the confession helped them target
their search, but that they had always planned to return.
“That’s why we kept [the apartment]
secure,’’ Blodgett said. “We had every intention of going back in.’’
The apartment was sealed with yellow
police tape for a year.
Although
the boy’s blood has been found in the apartment, analysts caution that
the information is too scant to determine what it means to the case. It
is unclear how much blood was found, and whether the evidence supports
Gonzalez’s confession.
“Given
the nature of the crime, you would have expected to have found so much
more blood,’’ said Richard Saferstein, a forensic science consultant
based in New Jersey. “Maybe they haven’t published all the data yet. It
may be premature to make any accusations or insinuations about this
person’s involvement.’’
Giovanni’s
disappearance has frustrated authorities since Sunday, Aug. 17, 2008,
when Colon went to pick the boy up after a weekend visit, and Ernesto
Gonzalez did not answer the door.
The Lynn Fire Department gained access to
the apartment through an open window and found Gonzalez inside, with a
still unexplained cut on his left hand, but without Giovanni.
At first, Gonzalez told police he did not
have the boy that weekend, according to court records. He was arrested
after Colon showed the police that she and Gonzalez had been in phone
contact. Neighbors later said they saw him with the boy that weekend.
Gonzalez refused to speak to authorities
for three months. Then, in November 2008, he unexpectedly broke his
silence in an interview with the Globe.
In addition to collecting scientific
evidence, authorities have also interviewed neighbors and combed a
surveillance videotape of the area.
An employee at Lynn Behavioral Health
Services told authorities that Gonzalez, with Giovanni in tow, visited
her office on Saturday, Aug. 16, 2008, for a counseling session. As they
left, just after midday, she heard him tell Giovanni that they would go
back to his apartment, a 10-minute walk away, to watch movies,
according to court documents.
A
man and a boy resembling Ernesto and Giovanni Gonzalez appear minutes
later on a surveillance video taken from a camera located between the
health services clinic and Gonzalez’s former apartment on Brightwood
Terrace.
Gonzalez is walking
ahead, followed by a small child dressed in shorts and a shirt.
In his confession, Gonzalez said he
stabbed Giovanni on Sunday morning as he was misbehaving. Gonzalez said
he regretted stabbing him, saying it just happened.
Gonzalez — who had two convictions in
2001, including for assault with a dangerous weapon, a knife — was
deemed competent to stand trial in January, according to court
documents. He is next due in court May 12. His attorney, Christopher
Skinner, did not return calls for comment.

The father of a missing East Boston boy is considering a plea agreement in connection with the child’s 2008 disappearance during a weekend visit in Lynn.

The development, disclosed this week in Essex Superior Court in Salem, could mark a significant shift in a case that has frustrated investigators since Giovanni Gonzalez, then 5, disappeared during a scheduled visit with his father, Ernesto Gonzalez, in Lynn.
In November 2008, Ernesto Gonzalez confessed in a jailhouse interview with the Globe that he stabbed the boy to death, dismembered his body, and disposed of the remains in trash bins throughout the city.
The 38-year-old former meatpacker has since pleaded not guilty to charges of parental kidnapping and misleading police and is being held without bail in Essex County Jail in Middleton.
Giovanni’s mother, Daisy Co lon, urged authorities yesterday to fight a possible plea until Giovanni is found. She said a reward is still posted for the boy’s safe return.
“I still believe he’s alive,’’ she said in a telephone interview. “I’m not losing my faith that my son is alive.’’
Authorities conducted a massive search for the boy but found no trace of him.
In Essex Superior Court this week, Gonzalez’s defense attorney, Christopher Skinner, asked the judge for a conference on Dec. 29 to discuss a possible plea agreement, which was first reported by the Daily Item of Lynn. Skinner was unavailable for comment yesterday.
It is unclear whether the Essex district attorney’s office would support such a plea. Spokesman Stephen O’Connell would not comment on the matter yesterday, citing the ongoing investigation.
After the confession in 2008, authorities conducted new searches of Gonzalez’s apartment. Subsequent DNA testing found the boy’s blood in his father’s apartment in Lynn, on a red-handled knife, on a piece of wood flooring, on the bathroom threshold, and on the cap to a bottle of pine-scented cleaner.
Gonzalez had resumed weekend visits with Giovanni shortly before the boy disappeared. He had not been in his son’s life for a year because he and Colon differed over his approach to disciplining the boy. He and Colon had planned to work out a formal visitation agreement in court.
But that Sunday, Aug. 17, 2008, when Colon went to pick up Giovanni, Gonzalez denied having the boy that weekend.
Gonzalez was arrested after Colon showed police that they had been in touch by telephone, and later indicted on the current charges. Neighbors also said they saw Giovanni with his father that weekend.
For three months after his disappearance, Gonzalez refused to speak to investigators. Then, in November 2008, he unexpectedly confessed to a Globe reporter that his son had been behaving badly during the visit and that he lost control and killed him. Gonzalez said that he was regretful and that the stabbing just “happened.’’
Giovanni, who lived in East Boston with his mother and younger sister, has been described as an energetic boy who loved to play ball.
His mother dismissed the DNA test results that found Giovanni’s blood in his father’s apartment, saying that he often suffered cuts while playing. She said Giovanni had also suffered a nosebleed during a recent visit with his father.
Colon believed that she spotted her son in October 2008 walking down a Lynn street with a man. Police investigated the sighting, but did not find them.
Gonzalez had previous convictions in 2001 that included assault with a dangerous weapon, a knife.
He was deemed competent to stand trial in January 2010.