In late July 2001, Paul Auglys approached Emily, asking if she would take part in a police bugging operation on her nephew. The way the police put it to Emily was this: Sef by that stage was already contacting her, questioning her about things he had heard that she was saying about him. She was bound eventually to have a confrontation with him about the subject of his guilt or innocence, and what she saw that night at the house. So why not have that conversation under the protection of the police? They wanted Emily to direct the conversation, to tell Sef she knew without doubt that he had committed the murders, and that he had been in the house when she arrived at 6 Collins Street about 6 pm that night. She was to ask Sef how she could help him fix it so that the cops would not be onto him. The cops wanted to bug the conversation via a device inside Sef’s car. Eventually, Emily agreed.
Emily spoke to Sef on the phone and set up the meeting with her nephew to take place on 25 July, just after lunchtime, in the carpark of her office block at Macquarie Park. At 2.01 pm, Emily hopped into Sef’s vehicle, where they began to talk in Tagalog. There were at least four police cars containing officers from Tawas lurking in the carpark, as well as technical experts. A police helicopter floated within distance of a quick response, and heavily armed State Protection Group response officers were on standby.
Emily was terrified she would blow the ruse, but did her best. She wasn’t doing this for the police or even for herself. She was doing this for her three dead family members. Although she feared her nephew, some part of her still loved him — but justice was foremost in her mind. She thought, her only chance of getting a taped confession from Sef was to extend love and understanding, not accusations.
The conversation, later translated from Tagalog to English, began with the banal. After hopping into the Ford Festiva, she asked her nephew: ‘Why is this car too dirty?’
Sef replied that he hadn’t had it cleaned yet and that the police had to change his personalised numberplate.
‘Turn the engine off,’ she directed Sef. Sef responded that the battery had run down and he had to keep the engine going to recharge it.
Then Emily began in earnest. ‘I’m worried about you, because, Sef, I have to be perfectly honest with you, just like what . . . [I] told you, I love you very much, you know that.’
‘Yeah.’
‘I’ll do everything for you. Even until death, I’ll do anything for you. I will defend you, I won’t let anything bad happen to you. I’m scared, Sef.’
Emily asked Sef about the conversation at the Ferrers’, on the Friday after the murders, about whether it had been raining when Sef said he parked in the carport and did not get out due to this.
EMILY: You told me it was pouring that night. Sef, I know you’ve got something to do with what happened. But I understand, I understand, I was scared, Sef, because it wasn’t pouring rain that evening . . .
SEF: No, but when I drove in . . . it was drizzling, that’s why I did not get out of the car.
EMILY: Sef . . .
SEF: But what are you trying to say, Aunty Emily?
The sharp sideways glance he gave her made her back-pedal quickly. Holding his hands, she said to him: ‘I know, I know, I know, but I’m scared . . . because — didn’t you have a DNA test last Sunday?’
‘Yes,’ he replied.
Emily pushed on.
EMILY: I’m scared, Sef. I feel that they’re onto you.
SEF: No, because, that’s, they’re —
EMILY: It’s just a matter of time.
SEF: [inaudible] everything . . . I spoke to Michael [Sheehy] today . . . And they, he said . . .
EMILY: I don’t believe everything that the police were saying. Because, you know, when they asked me questions, I would like to be sure that we have the same answers. That’s the reason why I am talking to you now. I do not like the idea that I have to be the one pressuring you. Just like what I told you, I wish I did not [drop by] your place at six o’clock that night. I wish I didn’t see your car there. I have a feeling that the reason why they’re asking the times I left the office, the time I came to your house, even the way I rang the doorbell, how long I have been there, is because you said you [had] just been there not for a long time, because you were making a phone call.
SEF: No, I received a phone call in the car. But the reason . . . the reason . . . one of the reasons why I didn’t step out of the car, because it was drizzling . . . but I didn’t say that it was pouring down heavily, I said it was drizzling, that’s why I could not get out . . . I knew there was no-one in the house.
Emily pushed him further. ‘I read your statement, you said it was pouring, that’s what you said to me.’
Sef began to ramble. ‘That was on the night. Because . . . I said, I just said it was raining . . . I don’t remember my words if it’s pouring or . . . all I remember was the dog was there.’
Emily warned him he had to be careful about inconsistency, but Sef said he had clarified everything in his first statement satisfactorily.
‘What about your whereabouts, it’s all clarified?’ she asked him.
Sef answered, ‘Everything has been clarified.’
Emily asked if Sef was really being honest with her, and he assured her he was. She told him again she would do anything for him, and returned to the subject of arriving at the house on the evening of the murders.
EMILY: You know why I didn’t see you that night at once, because I was scared that you had anything to do with what happened. I was so scared. In fact, I was also thinking . . . I just tell you honestly . . . just between the two of us . . . I was thinking that you’re also a victim. I know it was my sister who died, but you are also a victim. In case you’re the one responsible for what happened, I will understand it. I know how your parents treated you ever since you were a kid. I know they loved you, but —
SEF: But Aunty Emily, you know I wouldn’t do something like that.
Emily was getting nowhere with this tack, and Sef seized control of the conversation, getting Emily on the back foot over her accusation to him on that the first night, at Gladesville police station.
SEF: And see when, you know that week I just couldn’t talk to you, because I was angry because [of ] that night. I was crying, I was really upset. The first thing that you asked me was, ‘What really happened?’, like the way you asked it was as if I have something to do with it already.
EMILY: I know it was wrong.
Sef went on to tell his aunt that at first her accusation did not register, that nothing was registering with him straight after the murders, but the next day he began to get upset and ask himself why she had said that.
Emily asked why he had not spoken to her to clarify things.
SEF: Because at that point, I even told Uncle, I didn’t have the energy to get angry at any[one] at the moment so I said . . . for Mama, especially. We were working towards her funeral, she wouldn’t want any argument like that . . . for the sake of the funeral, I was gonna make peace with you, I was gonna forget about that.
EMILY: Yes.
SEF: But the reason why I was so upset that first week, because it just really hurt me that you thought I have something to do with it. But circumstantially I understand, because you told me you saw my car there . . . I started to realise if I was there I’ll probably assume the same thing . . .
Emily apologised, then told Sef it was only because she was worried about him. ‘I’m really afraid for you. But if you [have] any problem or anything, you know you can talk to me. Don’t just talk to anybody, even with the police. If you’re feeling anything, you tell me, and if you need my help, you know you can count on me. I’m telling you that now.’
Sef then laid on a guilt trip, and Emily immediately perceived it to be emotional blackmail. He told her he was contemplating suicide. ‘The past two weeks, it’s like, I’m dead anyway . . . I was, like, floating.’
He said he was trying to fight the feeling but it was constantly there. He said in the next couple of months he would iron things out at his father’s work, liquidate the assets and donate the money to charity or relatives, then depart this world.
Emily tried to encourage him to stay strong, to go on.
They spoke a little about what she had seen at the house that night and Emily told him she had been there for about five minutes. Sef told her he was in the car and hadn’t heard any noise when she arrived, and at first was so upset with her he thought she was making it up.
He said whoever had committed the murders had planned to leave a relative behind, either himself or his father. They had taken clothes from his closet and from Teddy’s. ‘They’re planning to leave one of us so they can point a finger,’ Sef told her.
The conversation ended 35 minutes after it began, with no confession. Emily had done the best she could. But she knew her nephew was smart. She had known from the outset that the chances of success had been slim.
SEF’S FIRST MENTION that clothing was missing from the house had been made to Mick Sheehy on 23 July, the day after Sheehy casually informed Sef that some bloodstained clothing had been recovered in the vicinity of Collins Street and would be sent for forensic analysis. (It was later found to be unrelated to the murders and connected to a construction site down the road.)
Three of his tracksuits were missing from his closet, Sef said. Sheehy asked Sef to prepare a complete record of the missing clothing. On 27 July, Sef came back with a curious list: a black leather jacket belonging to Teddy, and, from Sef’s room, a grey tracksuit top, two black tracksuit tops, one pair of black track pants, one pair of grey track pants and a school blazer. Also on the list was a pair of green gardening gloves. Of all these items, the only one police had seized from the house was Sef’s school blazer.
Meanwhile, the clothing used by the killer, as well as the murder weapon, had yet to be found. One night in late July, the surveillance team lost Sef for a few hours, as he was driving near Lane Cove National Park. Police began to fret that if Sef was indeed the killer, he’d had the chance to recover the items and dispose of them for good.
Sam Dacillo’s sister Michelle and her father Sammy accompanied Tawas officers to Lane Cove National Park, where they had gone picnicking with the Gonzales family the year before. Police divers searched Lane Cove River for five days, recovering items such as a jammed bolt-action rifle, ammunition, house bricks, a cat collar and some cat bones. None of it was relevant to the Gonzales murders. The search was called off.