Three weeks into the investigation, armed with the information that they had gathered, Tawas officers decided it was time to sit Sef down for his first electronically recorded interview. There were more than a few things detectives wanted to put to Sef for explanation.
Before they did this, though, Geoff Leonard approached New South Wales Police psychologist Rozalinda Garbutt, who had extensively researched the phenomenon of intrafamilial homicide — the murder of one family member by another — in the United Kingdom. She was asked to review the crime-scene photos, Sef’s re-enactment video, the coroner’s diagram of the location of the victims’ bodies and the description of their injuries.
Garbutt noted that the killer had displayed ‘high emotion’, as evidenced by the excessive number of wounds and the location of the crimes, the family home. The closer the relationship between the victim and the killer, the more emotion usually shown during a crime, Garbutt wrote in her report for Tawas. And the ‘overkill’ apparent in the murders suggested the killer had lost control, although paradoxically there was also a degree of planning, in that the killer appeared to have waited for his next victim for a period of time. She concluded the murders were planned, yet the actual attacks were fuelled by emotion.
International research has concluded there are six factors that point to a killing that has been committed by someone within the victim’s family. First, the killer uses a weapon from the scene. Then, there are multiple wounds, the victim suffers trauma to the head or face, the body is left at the place of death, the crime occurs in the victim’s home, and a blunt weapon is used.
The murder of Clodine Gonzales, Garbutt noted, showed all six characteristics. Teddy’s and Loiva’s deaths showed five — they lacked an injury from a blunt object. On this basis, it was ‘highly probable’ the killer was a family member, Garbutt decided.
She noted that the killer had lain in wait for at least two of the victims, and the crime scene had been staged to suggest theft as a motive — Loiva’s handbag and Teddy’s briefcase were rifled through, and the wardrobe doors upstairs left ajar. The killer had spent a great deal of time at the scene, indicating a familiarity with the family and the house, as the killer had not been overly concerned about being discovered.
Planned acts against specific victims most commonly exist in cases of parricide (a child killing parents) or mariticide (the killing of a husband by his wife), the report said. Given that both parents were dead, and Loiva killed before Teddy, mariticide was not an option. And, of course, Clodine had been killed before either of her parents.
‘The offender therefore is more than likely one of the children . . . who has killed their parents in a planned crime to achieve a specific goal,’ Garbutt concluded. This buoyed the investigators, making them feel they were heading in the right direction.
MEANWHILE, THEY COULDN’T ignore other lines of enquiry. Even before Sam Dacillo was ruled out as a suspect, investigators had turned their attention to Clodine’s ex-boyfriend, twenty-year-old Christopher Fernstat.
According to numerous relatives of the Gonzales family, Fernstat and the family had been on acrimonious terms because of his relationship with Clodine. Tawas detectives had wasted no time in tracking him down, and Fernstat was pulled into Sutherland police station to make a statement on 11 July, the day after the murders.
Fernstat had met Clodine at an under-eighteen dance party at Darling Harbour during Easter 2000. Clodine was with a couple of female friends and she approached Fernstat while he was dancing with a mate of his. They started dancing and chatting. Clodine gave Fernstat her mobile number that night.
Their relationship did not last long. They went out on six or seven dates, playing pool and computer games, over a period of about a month. Fernstat told police they had never had sex. Clodine had told him a bit about her family, that they were very strict Catholics and she was given no independence. Her mother controlled the whole family, she said.
Fernstat had met Sef a couple of times, and once met Loiva at the Chatswood shops. The last time he saw Clodine, she had sneaked out of her house to meet him at the end of the street between 11 pm and midnight. She thought her parents had gone to sleep early and would be none the wiser.
No sooner had Clodine arrived at the meeting place than Fernstat’s mobile phone rang; it was Teddy Gonzales. Was Chris with his daughter? Chris assured Teddy he was not with Clodine, but after the call ended Clodine was shaken, upset and tearful. The young couple waited for three hours, kissing and cuddling, before she screwed up her courage to go home.
The next day, Fernstat received a phone call from Loiva, who told him the family had disowned Clodine and were going to send her back to the Philippines for her transgression.
A few days later, Teddy called Fernstat to inform him that someone had left an abusive message on Sef’s phone. Was it him? Fernstat protested that it wasn’t. Teddy, disbelieving, told him not to do it again. Fernstat asked after Clodine and Teddy informed him that her life was finished. Teddy threatened he would get Fernstat back for leading his daughter astray.
Clodine called Fernstat a week after the sneaking-out debacle, telling him she was in Melbourne staying with her aunt. They maintained phone contact, speaking every night for a month, during which period Loiva called Fernstat a few times, telling him not to contact Clodine.
Fernstat also was contacted by Sef via an Internet chat program. He told police Sef had threatened to kill him, and warned him he was a gang member. It sure scared the hell out of Fernstat, enough for him to call Clodine to break up. Clodine didn’t take the threat seriously; she said her big brother had only been joking and just wanted to protect her.
Chris Fernstat had an ironclad alibi for the afternoon and evening of 10 July 2001. He’d worked until 5 pm, then walked around Hurstville shopping centre with his new girlfriend, bumping into a few mates on the way. There were several people who could verify his movements. He hadn’t even known that Clodine was in Sydney.
Chris Fernstat quickly dropped off the suspect list.
FILIPINO LAWYER BERNADO DAVID, who worked in the same office complex as Teddy, alerted Tawas detectives to a conversation of Teddy’s that he said he had overheard two months before the murders, in which the person on the other end of the line threatened Teddy.
Teddy had been arguing fiercely in Tagalog, then yelled, ‘Fuck you!’ into the receiver before slamming down the phone. David, who had stopped by during the conversation, told police Teddy was agitated, and David asked him what was wrong.
‘I have a property transaction in the Philippines that fell through. My brother is over there acting as an agent for me. The other party has told my brother they are going to eliminate my family,’ Teddy confided.
David said he had made a joke of it — asking how could they come to Australia and kill the Gonzales family when they didn’t have a visa — but Teddy did not elaborate.
Tawas officers checked all the phone calls made and received from Teddy’s office for the six months prior to the murders, but came up with nothing to verify a threatening call from the Philippines. The only possibility was a call routed through an AAPT switch in Indonesia. It could have come from the Philippines, and the timeframe fitted with a call Freddie made to Teddy asking him to get in touch with their parents.
Freddie Gonzales would deny knowledge of this supposed property deal gone wrong, and police could find no evidence of transactions to indicate a financial failure.
In a later statement, David would tell police about an incident that occurred around 1998, in which a disgruntled client of Teddy’s had threatened to kill the Gonzales family. David said the client had come to him, complaining that he and two other family members had mortgaged their property in the Philippines to pay a AU$5000 fee to apply for residency in Australia. They were about to be sent home by immigration authorities, and felt duped by Teddy.
‘I’m going to kill his family and I’m going to rape his wife,’ David says the man told him in a fit of rage.
David says this was not the first time he’d had Teddy’s clients coming to see him, hoping David could fix up the mess they were in. David says he liked Teddy — he and his family would occasionally go on holiday with the Gonzales — but was well aware that Teddy had attracted criticism from within the Filipino community for lodging unsuccessful refugee applications, allowing the applicants to stay in Australia for a year or so before being deported. David says he would not take on the jobs, instead telling the complainants to get Teddy to sort things out.
David says he also saw flashes of serious temper in Teddy. One particular incident occurred in the Blacktown building where they’d both worked since 1996. One day, an accountant in the building let a client park in Teddy’s car space because it was past 6 pm, and he thought Teddy had gone home. But Teddy came back to the office, enraged, and visited every office in the building until he tracked down the culprit. Teddy advised the accountant in no uncertain terms never to do it again.
IN THE DAYS leading up to 1 August 2001, Mick Sheehy and Ritchie Sim stayed late at work, formulating their plan of how to conduct Sef’s interview. Sim and Sheehy had worked together before, and Sheehy knew Sim’s style was harder, more confrontational than his own. They decided Sheehy would put most of the early, clarifying questions to Sef before they took turns hitting him with the difficult stuff. It would be a sort of good cop (Sheehy), bad cop (Sim) style interview.
They knew this might be their only crack at it, that Sef might decide to shut up once the questions became more difficult. Sef was not obliged to tell the police anything. His cooperation was voluntary, although the way Sheehy saw it, he really had no choice but to cooperate with police if he wanted to convince his family members he was innocent.
Before the first recorded interview took place, a New South Wales Police profiler prepared a report that made suggestions about the way to approach Sef Gonzales, based on the information about him that police had gathered up to that date.
It noted that Sef ‘appears to view himself with grandiosity’ and ‘appears to seek admiration from others’. It observed that Sef had a history of telling lies, in an apparent attempt to protect and enhance his self-esteem. ‘Sef is likely to detail his own concerns in a lengthy manner. Sef likely feels superior to police at this time, yet wary of them’, the report stated.
The suggestion for the first interview was to make Sef feel as comfortable as possible, and approach him in an informal manner. Sef should not be dominated in the interview, and police should not interrupt him. ‘It is considered that Sef will be willing to talk to investigators. Investigators should capitalise on this willingness by allowing him to talk . . . you are there to listen to Sef, and hear what he has to say. The use of silence should induce Sef to fill the gaps’, the report said.
In phase two of the interview process, the profiler suggested, the inconsistencies in Sef’s statement should be put to him, with Sef being asked to explain them. ‘Each answer he gives will need to satisfy the interviewer, rather than satisfy Sef.’
A break should take place between that and the third phase, in which police should return to an informal tone and let Sef know about the crime-scene evidence they had to date, as well as the fact they knew about the pressures on him at home, and the humiliation he must have suffered for his failures, which would put Sef off-balance.
‘Sef by now should be destabilised and probably at his weakest point in the interview. If there is a time when he will confess, this is likely to be it. So now you need to give him an “out” [a reason for him to make excuses for having committed the crimes]. Use a compassionate tone, and sympathetic approach.’
Upon these words of advice, the plan for the interview was completed. The detectives would follow the first two recommended phases, to begin with, and leave their options open to pursue the third.
THE INTERVIEW WAS held in a stark room at Chatswood police station and began at 6.06 pm. Sheehy warned Sef that he was not obliged to say anything, but that whatever he did say would be recorded and could be used in evidence. Sef was reserved but composed as the questioning began.
Sheehy ran Sef gently back over his version of what he had done on the day of 10 July, what he was studying at university, the route he took to Raf De Leon’s house, and the phone calls he said he made and received. Then it was on to the night out with Sam Dacillo, and the pair’s arrival back home. Sheehy confirmed with Sef that he had not seen the racist graffiti inside the house. They also went back over the road rage incident, just to clarify what had occurred. (Checks of video surveillance from the Shell service station in Wicks Road did not reveal any such incident on the night of 9 July.)
Then Sheehy broadsided Sef with a question.
SHEEHY: Do you carry a baseball bat in your car?
SEF: No.
SHEEHY: You don’t have one at all?
Sef reconsidered, and his nervousness began to show as he stammered through his answer.
SEF: I think I probably had some, well, I had a baseball bat at some stage but I don’t know, I don’t know where, where, where it is. I think I may have, ’cause I remember when we were in our old house we had it, I’m not sure if we, if we had it with us when we moved to Collins [Street] as well, ’cause I, I never saw it when we moved to Collins. If we did it may have been stored in the, in the shed, but I can check that for you tomorrow.
Sheehy asked if the bat was kept in any of the three cars, bearing in mind Sam Dacillo’s statement that Sef claimed to carry a bat in the boot of his Festiva. Sef said no.
Asked if it was a wooden bat, Sef said it was, then he volunteered:
SEF: There is a stage that I had it, I think in my car when we were in Blacktown. I had it, ’cause we,’ cause my dad, I think he bought a cricket bat as well as, just as, just to put in the boot of his car. Think it’s, I don’t know if it’s still there.
SHEEHY: Yeah.
Sef continued to ramble.
SEF: And I had either a baseball bat or a cricket bat. I think there was a baseball bat in my car at some stage . . . but I remember taking it out because it made rattling noises in the boot, and because I had my, I have a subwoofer there and there wasn’t much space . . . and I remember I took it out and I, yeah, I think, the last time I remember having it I think it was when we were at Numa [Road], at my, our previous address, but I haven’t had it in the car for a long time.
Sheehy worked his way around to asking Sef about the Sam Dacillo calls on the evening of 10 July. The SMS Sef said Sam had sent him around 5.20 pm did not show up on telephone records, Sef was informed. The records showed that the only SMS from Sam to Sef’s phone that day was at 8.52 am. Could Sef explain that?
SEF: A lot of times the text messages are delayed. I think you can check that with Vodafone that it happens a lot of times. I could, sometimes I send a message today and sometimes the receiver does not receive it till the day after. I don’t know, but that’s, that’s an explanation to it.
But Sam’s SMS was received on Sef’s phone hours earlier than Sef said he received it, Sheehy pointed out. Despite this, Sef continued with his own peculiar brand of logic.
SEF: Sometimes when my SIM, another explanation is when my SIM is, reaches about fifteen messages and I, I delete a message so there’s space for another message. Sometimes it delays again the receiving of the message, that’s the only problem with the Nokia. That’s, that’s the only explanation I can think of.
Sheehy moved on to the phone call Sef said he received from Sam at 6 pm, while he was parked in the carport at 6 Collins Street. According to Sam’s phone records, the only call Sam made to Sef on that date was at 7.54 pm. Could Sef explain that?
SEF: Yeah, I don’t have any explanation why six minutes to eight. Yeah, I, my recollection of the conversation was at that time [6 pm].
On the same tack, Sheehy asked why Sef’s records made no listing of a call to his mother’s mobile phone around the time he was supposedly in the carport, trying to reach her.
SEF: The only, the only thing I can think of is that the call didn’t get through. That’s, I don’t know, I don’t, I don’t have any possible explanation, that’s all I can think of but I was sure I, I attempted to call her and that was the, that was the message that I got.
Asked about his recollection that it was raining around that time, which is why he did not get out of the car, Sheehy pointed out that Sef said he normally entered via the laundry door and that the path from the carport to this door was under cover. Sheehy showed Sef a photograph of the area he was referring to. Sef said this was not true, there was a gap in the covering of the walkway where the water poured through, and that water from the gutters also flooded onto the ground.
With that, the interview ended at 10.15 pm. Sef was visibly rattled, and he didn’t look happy.