A life broken, a life missing

Splintered past, erratic behavior preceded horrific jail cell confession by Lynn father

Ernesto L. Gonzalez Jr. was arraigned yesterday in Essex Superior Court in the case of his missing son. (Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff)

LYNN - After a long day of yard work, Ernesto L. Gonzalez Jr.'s neighbors were relaxing on the back porch when they heard the sound of smashing glass. Then they heard screams coming from the three-decker next door.

An irate Gonzalez had punched his girlfriend, shattered a minivan's windows, and cut wires under the hood. Then, folding knife in hand, he chased her as she ran for help. When police arrived on that summer night in 2001, he threw down the knife and fled.

"I'm not getting down" on the ground, he told officers, according to court records. They finally subdued him with pepper spray.

Seven years later, Gonzalez stands accused of something far more serious: the disappearance of his 5-year-old son, Giovanni, in August. Yesterday, shackled at the wrists and ankles in Essex Superior Court in Salem, he pleaded not guilty to charges of parental kidnapping and misleading police. He had been held since the disappearance on a lesser charge of child endangerment, which was dismissed in Lynn District Court.

Gonzalez had confessed in a Nov. 26 jailhouse interview with a Globe reporter to stabbing the boy to death in his Lynn apartment, then dismembering and disposing of the body. Investigators are skeptical of his claim because no physical evidence has turned up, and yesterday few new details emerged.

But the 2001 episode in Lynn - for which he was convicted of assault, battery, and other charges - offers a glimpse into the 36-year-old meatpacker's turbulent life.

Relatives and co-workers say Gonzalez is a study in contrasts: hard-working, physically fit, and strong-willed, but also short-tempered, distant, and prone to bizarre behavior. He would burst into high-pitched laughter for no apparent reason. Co-workers feared him. Relatives rarely visited.

Two cousins in Lynn expressed doubt that Gonzalez killed his son. They said he had been studying for his GED, though he struggled to read and write.

"He was actually trying to turn his life around," said his cousin Tracey Contreras. "I just don't know where this came from."

Another cousin, Catalina Soto, said he "wasn't up to par mentally" but was kind to her children and to Giovanni and went to church or had dinner with her family. In June, he went to court to seek visitation rights with Giovanni.

Soto said Gonzalez told her in October that he didn't hurt Giovanni. "It makes no sense to file for custody and then harm his own son," said Soto.

Gonzalez was born in 1972 near his family's seaside hometown of Arroyo, in Puerto Rico. His mother moved Gonzalez and his sister to Lynn when they were children.

Growing up, Gonzalez was a jokester who liked to build snow forts, play video games, and play-fight.

"He was always the cousin that I always wanted to play with," Contreras said.

Contreras said Gonzalez had been treated harshly by his stepfather when he was young. Later, Gonzalez fell in with the wrong crowd.

In 1991, when he was 19, he was arrested twice on separate assault and battery cases. He moved back to Puerto Rico, where he was a boxer and had a relationship with a woman.

But his relationship ended, he returned to Lynn in the late '90s, and his life seemed to improve. A judge dismissed the assault and battery charges against him in 1999. He soon landed a full-time job at Old Neighborhood, a red-brick meatpacking plant across the street from a pizzeria named Giovanni's.

Relatives and others say he could be kind-hearted and generous with gifts. He was also disciplined: He quit smoking cold turkey and became a devoted runner.

Co-workers said he always arrived on time for his 5 a.m. shift and toiled silently in the chilled room, wearing two pairs of gloves, a hairnet, and a long blue quilted coat. He was quick on the assembly line, stuffing sliced roast beef into plastic bags.

But he rarely spoke and often wore a cool stare, they said.

Several co-workers who spoke on the condition of anonymity said Gonzalez always ate lunch alone.

"They would say he wasn't right in the head," one said. "He'd all of a sudden start laughing to himself."

Relatives chalked up his long silences to a rough life.

"I just felt that he had locked himself within himself," Soto said. "He had learned to distrust the world."

Gonzalez's meat-packing job is part of the debate over his confession. He did not work with knives at the plant, workers said. But among his duties, according to one worker, was to clean the meat juices from the floor with hoses, foam, and wipers, raising questions about whether that skill would explain why investigators have found no evidence to corroborate his confession.

Richard Saferstein, a forensic science consultant in New Jersey, said it is possible to destroy evidence with bleach and other tools - but unlikely. It would require meticulous planning, and Gonzalez told the reporter he killed Giovanni suddenly after the boy misbehaved.

"It's someone that has to really know what they're doing," Saferstein said.

In his confession, Gonzalez said he loved his son and was regretful.

His lawyer, Lawrence McGuire, did not return phone calls seeking comment. But Soto said she doubted Gonzalez would be capable of such a crime.

"Even in his worst times I don't think he would have done something like this to his son, or to anybody," she said.

Through his life, Gonzalez had several girlfriends and four children. But Giovanni's mother, Daisy Colón, said in a recent interview that Giovanni was probably the child he knew best.

Gonzalez met Colón through one of his aunts in the summer of 2002. They dated for a couple of months, broke up, then reconciled when she learned she was pregnant.

"He said he was going to be there for me," she said in an interview before Gonzalez's confession.

Giovanni Ernesto Gonzalez was born on May 1, 2003, in Beverly. In the two years the couple stayed together, Colón said, Ernesto Gonzalez was orderly and neat, but controlling. They parted in July 2005.

After that, Gonzalez visited sporadically, having Giovanni over for occasional sleepovers.

"I trusted Ernesto even though things between me and him were not 100 percent," said Colón, who lives in East Boston. "The relationship between Giovanni and him was not about me. It was about a little boy who wanted his father in his life."

Colón said she and Gonzalez disagreed over disciplining Giovanni. In mid-2007, she told Gonzalez that he couldn't see the boy until he sought counseling.

He did not see his son again for a year.

In July, Colón allowed Gonzalez to start visiting Giovanni again as his petition for visitation rights was pending in the court. The first two visits went well, she said, so she scheduled another on Aug. 15.

When she dropped Giovanni off that Friday, she warned Gonzalez that he had to stay in their son's life.

"I said, 'This is your last time,' " she said. " 'You have to make a decision - you're in or you're out.' "

Two days later, when she arrived to pick up Giovanni, the boy was gone. Gonzalez told police he didn't have the boy that weekend, but witnesses saw them together. Now he faces up to 10 years in state prison for misleading police and up to a year in county jail for parental kidnapping.

He was ordered held without bail yesterday in Essex County Jail in Middleton.

In Lynn, the blinds are drawn in the gray-and-yellow three-decker where he lived, across the street from district court. Posters of his missing son are still taped to courthouse doors.

Maria Sacchetti can be reached at msacchetti@globe.com. John R. Ellement can be reached at ellement@globe.com