Father's confession horrifies neighbors

Investigators mum as they seek proof

LYNN - Neighbors yesterday expressed shock that Ernesto L. Gonzalez Jr. had confessed to killing his 5-year-old son, Giovanni, during a weekend visit in August.

"If he really killed that little kid, he should go to jail for the rest of his life," said Gilberto Fuentes, 30, who lives on Brightwood Terrace, where Gonzalez allegedly killed the boy in his apartment. "He's not here no more, so I guess it's safe."

Gonzalez, 36, a former meat packer, told a Globe reporter on Wednesday that he stabbed and dismembered his son while the child was visiting him, then dumped the remains in three trash bins around the city, about 10 miles north of Boston.

The disappearance of the boy set off a massive search from Lynn as far away as Florida and Puerto Rico. Authorities had called the case one of the most frustrating and disturbing they had seen. They had been stymied in their efforts to solve the mystery because they found no weap on and little physical evidence, and Gonzalez refused to cooperate with investigators. Gonzalez has been sitting in the Essex County jail, held on $500,000 cash bail and awaiting trial on child endangerment charges.

In the jailhouse interview, Gonzalez said he lost his temper after his son was "behaving badly" and did not respond to a scolding. The next thing he knew, he said, he was stabbing the boy with a red-handled kitchen knife. He said he dismembered his son's body in the bathtub and dumped his remains in trash bins in Lynn. He said he washed the knife and returned it to a kitchen drawer.

"It happened. I was upset. It happened in a moment," he told reporter Maria Sacchetti.

Steve O'Connell, a spokesman for Essex District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett, would not comment further on the case yesterday, except to say: "We will review the alleged statement of the defendant and determine whether it is truthful or not. The investigation remains ongoing."

He would not say how investigators will seek to corroborate or disprove the story, at least part of which seemed accurate. Yesterday, dumpsters could be found in two of the three locations he cited in the interviews - at the Big Lots discount store and behind the Eastern Bank on Union Street. There was no dumpster by the stone St. Stephen's Episcopal Church near Lynn Common. But a man parked nearby yesterday said several dumpsters were there during the summer.

Yesterday, no one answered the door at the East Boston home of the boy's mother, Daisy Colón.

Across the street, a group of young men outside Danny's Market, a Spanish-American grocery store, said they knew Colón but hadn't seen her in two days. "We used to see the kid, playing like an ordinary kid. One day he was gone," said one of the men.

In Lynn, neither Fuentes nor several other neighbors knew Gonzalez or his son.

Chris Tchorzynski, 55, was stunned that the killing may have taken place directly across the small plaza from his own house. "Oh my God," he said. "I don't know what would make someone do that to their own child."

If the crime occurred in the apartment, he said, there must be some physical proof.

"I don't see how he did it," he said. "If that's true, there's some evidence up there somewhere, in some crack, some crevice."

Records show that in 2001, Gonzalez was arrested by Lynn police after fighting with his then girlfriend, threatening her with a knife, vandalizing her car with a knife, threatening a neighbor with a knife, and then threatening police officers with a knife. In 2003, he was convicted on multiple assault and battery charges and was sentenced to three months in the Essex County House of Correction.

Though the confession could give investigators the break they have been looking for, they appeared skeptical about Gonzalez's statements. According to authorities, the physical evidence recovered at Gonzalez's apartment is inconsistent with his description of the crime. They had found a blood-stained mop and blood on the cap of a cleaning product, but determined the blood was not Giovanni's. Some evidence is still being tested, authorities said.

"Nothing in the investigation substantiates it," said one law enforcement official yesterday.

In an interview with the Globe the day before Gonzalez confessed, Colón said she has been waiting since Sunday, Aug. 17, the afternoon she pounded on his father's door in Lynn, to pick up her only son from the weekend visit. No one answered, and no one could find Giovanni.

Since that day, life has been an agonizing blur for her. She said she rarely sleeps, and suffers migraines.

"I wouldn't even wish it on my worst enemy," she said. "It's like I'm not full. I'm empty. A big part of me has been missing."

Maria Sacchetti of the Globe staff contributed to this report.