Missing boy's dad at pretrial hearing

First appearance since arraignment

Giovanni Gonzalez (left), 5, has not been seen since Aug. 16. His father, Ernesto Gonzalez, was in court yesterday. (Owen O'Rourke/ The Daily Item via AP)

LYNN - When he walked into the courtroom handcuffed yesterday, Ernesto Gonzalez seemed to stiffen his neck, struggling to keep his eyes locked on the judge to his left, avoiding the woman seated in the front row to his right.

Daisy Colon sat there. Colon was the mother who had regained enough trust in Gonzalez that she agreed to let their son, 5-year-old Giovanni Gonzalez, spend an August weekend with his father, someone who court records show had only had intermittent contact with his son.

Giovanni Gonzalez has not been seen since Aug. 16 at a therapist's office in Lynn.

Yesterday, Ernesto Gonzalez was seen in public for the first time since his Aug. 18 arraignment on a child endangerment charge. He deliberately avoided looking at Colon, so upset by what she saw that she declined to talk with reporters after the two-minute hearing ended.

But Stephen O'Connell, a spokesman for Essex District Attorney Jonathan W. Blodgett, told reporters that the search for the child - which has already covered great swatches of Lynn, parts of Lawrence, some of the state's coastline, and Gonzalez's relatives in Puerto Rico - continues.

However, the tips that arrived after news of Giovanni's disappearance got widespread media coverage in mid-August have dried up, and authorities need the public's help to send the search in a new direction.

In the past, authorities asked for anyone who saw father and son together the weekend of Aug. 15-18, when Giovanni was staying with his father in his Brightwood Terrace apartment in Lynn, to contact them. Now, O'Connell said anyone who saw Ernesto Gonzalez by himself could help restart the search.

"Tell us where, tell us when," O'Connell said at the courthouse. "That might be the key. We will spare no expense, we will spare no manpower in order to bring this boy home."

Gonzalez's attorney, Lawrence McGuire, filed paperwork seeking the dismissal of all charges and trying to suppress any evidence authorities have collected against the onetime meat plant worker.

McGuire contended in court papers that authorities had no evidence that Ernesto Gonzalez caused his child harm. The lawyer also wrote that items seized by police armed with search warrants from his client's apartment in August were obtained without adequate legal support.

The motions are set to be heard Dec. 11, and a trial date was set for Jan. 13.