Police plot strategy in hunt for boy

Lynn case to air on 'America's Most Wanted'

LYNN - About 25 investigators from the Lynn Police Department, the FBI, and State Police met for several hours yesterday morning to determine the next steps in their search for a 5-year-old boy who disappeared almost two weeks ago.

"We are pursuing it that he is still alive," Lynn Police Captain Mark O'Toole said during a news conference yesterday about Giovanni Gonzalez, who was reported missing Aug. 17 by his mother two days after she dropped him off at the home of his father, Ernesto L. Gonzalez Jr., 36. "We have nothing at this time to suggest otherwise."

Investigators have been distributing a missing person flier that will be aired tomorrow on "America's Most Wanted," a move detectives hope will draw national attention to the case. The flier shows a picture of a smiling Giovanni beside a police photo of his father, a Puerto Rican native with a dark goatee.

"We don't know whether he's still in Lynn, whether he's still in Massachusetts," O'Toole said of the boy at yesterday's news conference at police headquarters. "We don't know who he might be with."

O'Toole said police have no evidence to suggest the boy has been taken out of the country.

Detectives who searched the father's apartment became alarmed when they found a blood-stained mop and blood on the cap of a cleaning product, both of which were tested. Steve O'Connell, a spokesman for Essex District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett, maintained yesterday that he could not discuss the blood test results because the investigation in ongoing. Investigators received the results Wednesday.

Among the items investigators took from Gonzalez's apartment were the mop and cleaner, toys, a knife, and lighter fluid, according to court records.

Giovanni's mother, Daisy Colon, reported her son missing after she got no response when she went to pick him up at Gonzalez's Brightwood Terrace apartment in Lynn.

Police later entered the apartment and found Gonzalez, but not the boy. Police have searched for the child in wooded areas, cemeteries, and empty buildings in Lynn.

According to police records, Colon told authorities that the parents had a verbal agreement to hold scheduled visits until Sept. 15, when they were supposed to go to court to work out custody and visitation rights. Ernesto Gonzalez Jr. denies ever having the boy and has refused to cooperate, though witnesses have told police they saw the father and son together the same weekend the boy went missing. The father has been charged with child endangerment and is being held on $500,000 cash bail.

Colon said yesterday that she believes that her son is still alive.

"I know and I have it in my heart, and I feel it that he is alive," Colon said in a telephone interview, her voice raspy.

Jonnelle Marte can be reached at jmarte@globe.com.