It was Sef Gonzales’ homecoming — except the scene was all wrong.
The once well-cared-for house at 6 Collins Street stood dark and silent, its vertical blinds drawn. The lawn that Teddy had kept immaculate was now overgrown. Three carnations strewn by an anonymous mourner lay on the driveway.
Sef walked towards the mailbox, overflowing with envelopes addressed to people dead eleven months. He cleared the mail then walked towards the front door, retrieving a set of keys from the pocket of his black leather jacket. He found the right key and the door swung open. He led the media crew inside to the tiled foyer.
It was 31 May 2002, and Sef had reached a decision.
Several journalists from Sydney’s major media outlets had been pursuing Sef for an interview for months. The circumstances of his family’s murder and the question of Sef’s guilt or innocence had been ongoing subjects of newsroom discussion.
Living life under a cloud of suspicion had now become too much for Sef. The pressure of being a suspect had steadily built. He declared he wanted a story run in the media so he could clear his name and also appeal for the ‘real’ killer or killers of his family to be caught. His reference to his family’s ‘real’ killers — and the suggestion ‘they’ were waging a campaign of intimidation against him, lest he speak out — became a common theme in Sef’s informal discussions with reporters.
Of course, financial benefit may also have been a motivation. The prolonged game of cat-and-mouse with the detectives of Strike Force Tawas had left Sef frustrated and impatient. The Gonzales family estate was still frozen. Legally, Sef could not touch a cent until his name was cleared. As far as ongoing income went, he had little. He earned a meagre amount performing manual labour at a small family-run Pymble factory that produced water-filtering equipment, as well as cleaning churches. Both jobs had been organised for him by a Catholic priest, Father Paul Cahill of Killara parish.
Sef argued vigorously that he should be paid for any interview he granted — and he wanted big money. A television current affairs program, he claimed, was willing to pay him tens of thousands of dollars for his story. He said he needed to be paid so he could afford to hire security to protect himself. Once he went public with his appeal to find the killers, ‘they’ were bound to become enraged, and would come after him. He feared for his safety, he said.
However, few — if any — media outlets in Sydney were willing to pay for Sef’s story, no matter how great a story it might be, because he was a triple-murder suspect.
I first met Sef early in 2002, over an omelette at the Chatswood Chase café he frequented. I knew next to nothing about the case, not having covered the murders to that point, but my news editor, Andy Byrne, wanted to find out if there were any developments in the case. I called Tawas police, but they were closely guarding the release of information. If they weren’t talking, I thought, I may as well try Sef himself. I had been overseas when the murders occurred; this would be my first crack at covering the story and I had no preconceptions about his guilt or innocence. To me, it was just another story.
I had obtained Sef’s phone number from the Internet advertisement for his father’s car, and gave him a call. Speaking as gently and sympathetically as I could, I tried to encourage him to tell me about his ordeal. I wasn’t trying to ascertain his guilt or innocence then, I was just trying to get the story. We agreed to meet to talk things over.
I arrived at the Chatswood café first, and was uncertain if it was Sef who was walking towards me a couple of minutes later. I was struck by how tiny he was, casually attired in jeans and a black shirt. He barely reached my shoulder. He had a thin frame and stood no taller than l60 centimetres (five feet three inches). His skin was smooth without a hint of stubble, his cheeks chubby, giving him a baby-faced look.
Hesitantly we approached each other. His handshake was soft; his manner gentle and unfailingly polite. He led me to a table and graciously pulled out a chair for me.
This was no naive boy though. I could tell almost immediately. It was because of his eyes. They gazed evenly at me as we spoke — off the record at this stage — and I could almost see his mind ticking over as he paused to carefully choose his words.
At the end of our first meeting, he told me his father had taught him to be a good judge of character, and that he trusted me. In the following weeks, I would visit him once, on my own, at his Chatswood unit. I persuaded him it would not look good if he were to profit from speaking about the death of his family — particularly as he was a prime suspect in the killings. But an appeal for information could help.
So it was that on 31 May, I, police reporter for the Daily Telegraph, interviewed Sef — free of charge.
THE WIND GUSTED outside the sleek glass and concrete structure of 1 Katherine Street, Chatswood late that morning.
Sef’s apartment on the eleventh floor of the Bentleigh building was a short walk from the ritzy Chatswood Chase shopping centre where he liked to browse through the clothing shops or grab a coffee. The apartment had one bedroom and a balcony with city views. The complex offered high security, with an intercom to screen potential visitors and a concierge desk in the lobby.
I buzzed on the intercom for unit 96, and Sef’s soft voice responded immediately. Within moments, the elevator descended from his floor and Sef stepped out to greet me and Telegraph photographer Nathan Edwards. Sef was wearing his trademark hip denim jeans and black designer T-shirt. His black hair had been freshly buzz-cut, but today he was not wearing his thin gold round-rimmed eyeglasses, which gave him a studious look.
Again, it came as a shock to me that this 21-year-old was suspected of committing three savage murders.
We arrived at Sef’s front door, marked by the black smears of police fingerprint powder. Sef claimed there had been a break-in at his unit earlier in the week, and that he had called the police, but he asked me not to mention it in my story. I agreed.
The police were sceptical about the break-in, I later discovered. Despite the tight security in the apartment block, there had been no-one caught on the video surveillance footage. Nor had the front-desk staff witnessed anyone acting suspiciously.
Sef suggested the intruders could have come and gone via the stairwell, thus avoiding detection by cameras. He implied these were the people who were responsible for taking away his family. Now, they wanted him.
Sef’s apartment reflected his meticulous personality. Everything was in order. The beige carpet was spotless, and on his dining table documents were stacked neatly.
His bedroom, too, was neatly arranged. The bed was perfectly made, with not a crease in the comforter sitting atop it. Next to the bed was his desk, and a sleek grey laptop. It was probably the third or fourth he had owned since his family’s murder. Sef had had his computers seized for forensic analysis by police several times. Offhandedly, he remarked it was too difficult to reclaim the computers from investigators. He just kept replacing them.
In the lounge room, the surfaces and furnishings were cluttered with flowers and furry stuffed animals, apparently gifts.
However, what was most noticeable about the whole unit was what was missing. Not a single photograph of Sef’s murdered family was on display. Three perfect studio portraits of his mother, father and sister, smiling and dressed up in their best outfits, that had been placed on his bedroom windowsill during my first visit, were gone.
Sef’s large balcony, which looked southwest towards the city skyline, was devoid of furniture. The only sign of visitors was a large screw-top bottle almost full of cigarette butts. Sef apparently did not smoke, but his girlfriend Linda Pham did.
As we sat on his buttercup-coloured couch, Sef offered us both a glass of water before the interview began in earnest.
Sef began by describing his suffering since his family was murdered. He described the time since the murders as a ‘struggle every day’.
‘It’s more of a daily battle, that I just try to get through the day and you know when I get past the day then I’m happy. And I just . . . I dread the next day.
‘It’s very difficult because there’s a lot of — there’s a lot of pain and anger inside of me. And on top of that I have to deal with the speculation that surrounds me and I have to deal with the kind of remarks that are said towards me or towards my family and a lot of the pain and the anger goes towards that. You know, the pain and the anger in a way amplifies the hurt of losing them and the biggest disadvantage in that is that I haven’t had a chance to grieve yet. It’s stopping me from grieving because I have to deal with so much first, and I think that’s the biggest disadvantage of the whole thing.’
He spoke about how he had considered his future before the murders.
‘The biggest struggle I face each day is trying to rebuild what I can and trying to see the future in a different way. In a way I’ve tried to do that by lying to myself, being in denial, putting up a façade for people to see, for myself.
‘It’s all I’ve got to go on, that façade keeps me strong even though it puts me in denial, it’s my way of trying to move on, it’s my way of trying to ignore the hurt, the pain, and ignoring the grieving, trying to live a normal life. But as time goes on I realise that I am just lying to myself, and I do need to face these things.’
He told of his dreams for his family, which were now lost.
‘I guess the best way to describe it is imagine knowing your whole life for twenty years, for twenty years of your life, you’ve got a picture of how the world is, you’ve got a picture of what you want for the future and that future is strong in your mind.
‘Now imagine just one day, all of that being taken away. The challenge isn’t just rebuilding what you can with your present world. The challenge is trying to find out, even figure out, where to begin, and the greater challenge is to try and picture the future, because my picture of the future [I had] then is impossible now.
‘There’s so many dreams that I had with my family, my dad had a lot of . . . I mean, we were all very ambitious, there were a lot of things that we needed to do, and wanted to do together.
‘At the moment, my sort of fairytale I’ve got is one day, I picture myself on a fishing boat with my son and my dad. Now it’s difficult to picture that future, erasing your dad from that image, and that’s my example of how difficult it is to even have a picture of the future to work towards.’
His sleep was troubled, he said.
‘A lot of the times I wake up in the middle of the night with a lot of frustration and anger, a lot of the times I wake up and I’m close to tears, but yet I’ve run out of tears to cry.’
Sef expressed frustration about people’s expectations of how he should behave after such a tragedy.
‘That’s one of the main things I deal with each day ever since, you know, the incident. People have, you know, their own ideas of how someone should act, and it’s not my place to tell people what to think.
‘They’ve got their right to make their own judgment, but I think what’s unfair is that they expect you to act in a particular way, and if you don’t act in that way they judge you differently. Say, for example, I don’t cry — it can be interpreted in the wrong way, or if, for example, I go to a party to try and put some normality back in my life, that gets interpreted as he’s recovered too quickly. And I think that’s unfair because that, and whatever rumours that you spread and speculate, that’s what makes it difficult to cope with the situation.’
Sef said he believed he was being judged unfairly purely because of the statistics of family killings.
‘In many ways you feel that there’s no presumption of innocence. You know, instead of the concept of innocent until proven otherwise, it’s otherwise until proven innocent. And I think that’s an unfair thing because . . . I’ve been told that nine out of ten of these cases usually involves either a family member or someone who knew the family, and just on those statistics alone people like myself go through that speculation already, because of those statistics. And the unfair thing about that is that they forget about the one out of the ten who are innocent and they [are] just treated as the nine out of the ten as well.’
Asked about who was making these assumptions about him, Sef said he did not wish to ‘point fingers’.
‘I hear things through the grapevine. Usually it’s people who want a convenient resolution for themselves. I don’t blame them for making their own opinions, but it’s unfair that they damage someone’s name, which in some ways it’s irreparable when you damage someone’s name. It’s worse than being put behind bars . . . in some ways already, you’re being treated like a criminal.’
However, he said he was more concerned about his dead family’s memory being besmirched than his own reputation.
‘To me, I’m not really that concerned about that any more, because like I said my name has already been damaged to some degree [and] it’d be a tough time fixing that. My main concern is the damage that’s done to my family’s name in the way that a lot of speculations have been spread about my family members and I think that’s very wrong because they’re not here to defend themselves. I can do my best to do that but they’re not here to defend themselves.’
Talking frankly about being a suspect in the murders, Sef said he would ‘just have to stretch my patience’. He said he had been through ‘the process’ with police.
‘I can’t tell police how to do their jobs, it’s not my position to do so. Having said that, I can’t criticise them for [doing] their jobs.
‘I know there are honest detectives on the case that simply want the truth as much as I do, I just leave it to them. It’s not my place to tell them what to do.’
Sef said he suspected he knew who killed his family, although he would not say outright whether he had given any names to police.
‘Well, I’ve given them all that I know and I’ll leave that up to them. But you know the best that I can do is try and assist them in some way. One of my goals at the moment is in the near future, when I am in the position to do so, I’d like to offer a substantial reward to people who may have some information that will lead to a successful conviction, that will lead to some answers.
‘I know that there are people out there who either know a friend or know a relative and know something about someone regarding what happened to my family and may be afraid to speak out and I can understand that. But if they are prepared to help, then I will do whatever I can to assist them and I’m sure that the police would do what they can to help them as well.’
Asked about the estate and his financial situation, Sef said he would prefer not to elaborate.
‘I think I’d prefer not to comment on the estate. Just that, it’s in its own process. I’m in many ways living independent of the estate. I’m doing my best to survive on my own. Some good friends have been able to help me with some employment and I’m still studying, continuing my studies.’
However, he had cut back on his studies following the murders.
‘I’m doing it by correspondence. It gives me time to work and to try and survive on my own.’
Asked if he would ever be able to work at a law firm, Sef said he did not know.
‘I’m not sure where my legal studies will lead me to. It’s a hurtful process to even study it sometimes because I remember my dad too much, and before, every time I was stuck on something I’d always refer to him and now that he’s not there sometimes it’s hurtful to even study what I’m studying now. And one of the reasons I decided to do what I’m doing is because of him. And I was doing another course previously and I got inspired by him to follow in his footsteps. And now that, you know, there’s no guidance in that direction and he’s no longer there . . .’
Speaking about the support he had received, Sef referred to the ongoing support of a Catholic priest. Although Sef said he did not wish to name him, it is known that Father Paul Cahill had become a very strong supporter of Sef Gonzales since the murder of his family.
‘He’s more of a friend than a priest to me. He’s known my family for over a decade and we lost contact a little bit but we have been in close contact lately and he has helped keep me strong,’ Sef said.
Asked about the work he was doing — the church cleaning and factory work — Sef said he had received limited support from the family estate, and was basically supporting himself. Obviously manual labour was a new experience for Sef.
‘A lot of the work that I do is more physical things, whereas it used to be a lot of desk jobs before, and it’s my way of getting away from it all sometimes.’
He said he had sought compensation from the Victims of Crime Tribunal but that a ruling had not been made. It was still pending. (In fact Sef had earlier successfully claimed about $15,000 for costs such as his family’s funeral before police advised the Tribunal that he was a suspect. Thus his further application for money was rejected.)
Asked whether he stood to inherit the family home, Sef said he did not know. ‘Even though I may stand to inherit it in the future, at this stage it’s not my place to decide what happens to the house — it’s not my house,’ he said.
The inheritance, which he agreed was probably worth around $1 million, was not a priority for him, he said. People had misunderstood the whole situation with the inheritance.
‘I mean I’ve had people assume that I’m getting a large inheritance, you know, or that I’ve gone away, or that I’m just spoiling myself, they don’t know what I am really going through.
‘I haven’t left, I’ve decided to stay because I wanted to face all these problems. I wanted to show in some way that I’m not running or hiding. I’m trying to face these problems the best way I can.
‘If they want to allude to some sort of motive to inheritance, which is not in my control, the way I see it now is that it’s more of a consequence than a benefit, that causes people to speculate about it. Every person who has a parent are bound to inherit from their parents but that’s not a motive to anything.’
Sef said he had deliberately isolated himself from people to protect them from the problems he was experiencing. Asked whether his relatives’ attitudes towards him had changed, he said he would prefer not to go into that subject in detail.
‘I’ve maintained a relationship with my family, they um . . . I’d be selfish if I just assumed that I was going through all the hurt and the pain. They’re going through their own grieving process and their own pain. I can’t judge how they act or how they react on the speculations or anything like that because it’s not my place to judge them. They’ve got their own healing to do and meantime I have to try to heal as well.’
He indicated he had learned who his real friends were through the ordeal.
‘I’ve learned a lot about friendship through the months and I’ve learned a lot about trust, about who my real friends were, and I really thank them from the bottom of my heart for being there.’
He said he used to visit the family home to try to erase the images in his head of his family’s bodies that night. But it did not work. He had not been back to the house for ‘a while’.
‘My images of that night are so very vivid to this day, and I don’t think trying to forget them helps, because I have tried everything I can to do that but I can’t deny myself that it’s something that I need to accept.’
He said one of his main ‘driving forces’ was to set up a foundation in the memory of his family. He wanted to call it the TLCS Foundation, with the letters representing the initials of each family member. He wanted the foundation to raise funds for charities such as the House With No Steps, victims of crime, Kids Help Line, children’s hospitals and cancer research. His father, Sef said, was devoted to charity work. He hoped this would spread some good from the ‘evil’ that had befallen his family.
‘In some ways I’ve given up trying to make sense of the tragedy. I guess the best I can do is try and get some good out of it. Maybe that’s a positive step if I try and do that.’
Sef said he would stay and fight to clear his name, and finalise this ‘unfinished chapter’ in his life. He hoped that after that, he could begin to heal from the trauma.
He finished the interview with a public appeal. He indicated that he was speaking to his lawyers about offering a six-figure sum for information about who murdered his family. Sef asked, and the Daily Telegraph agreed, to publish an e-mail address that anyone with information could contact.
‘I know that somewhere out there, there is someone who knows something about someone, whether it be a friend or a relative who’s afraid to speak out for whatever understandable reasons. Like I said, I’ll do whatever I can and I’m sure the police would do whatever they can to assist whoever is brave enough to come forward with information.
‘And I just want to leave them with one last phrase which my dad shared with me, and that’s: “There’s no softer pillow when you go to sleep at night than a clear conscience.”
‘And I think that if they take that to heart, it might give them a bit of courage,’ he concluded.
THREE GRAVES IN a row, set amongst the plush green lawns and winding driveways of Macquarie Park Memorial Cemetery. The resting place for the Gonzales family was only a five-minute drive from Sef’s new home at Chatswood.
Sef kneeled in front of his family’s graves for the photographer, his black leather jacket and jeans contrasting starkly with the lavenders, light pinks and deep violets of the posies clustered around the headstones. His demeanour was calm. His elbow propped against one knee, he stared at the inscriptions as if lost in thought. He did not cry, nor did he speak.
Sef had agreed to the photograph, which would accompany the story based on his interview earlier that day. It was a macabre, uncomfortable task, but this was the most powerful image to illustrate the story.
Later that afternoon, Sef told us, Harry Potter from Channel Ten would also interview him at the grave site for the five o’clock news. It was a situation the Daily Telegraph was not entirely happy with. The story would no longer be an exclusive. Sef understood this, but said he had promised Potter he would be able to film there. He was steadfast, refusing to budge. We would not find out until many months later that Sef had been stringing us along: he had already done his interview with Harry Potter that morning before we arrived at Chatswood.
Sef then volunteered to take us to the house where his family had been murdered. Inside, the house was dark and musty. Belongings lay stacked in a haphazard fashion, as if someone had been interrupted in the process of moving.
The tiled foyer where Teddy had been found by police led to a nearly bare lounge–dining room on the left. This was where Loiva Gonzales had been found.
To the left of the foyer there was a small room — a study — where boxes and various personal effects were stashed. Here, Sef located a number of family photograph albums. We had requested some family shots. While we waited in the foyer, Sef flicked through the photographs, producing two dated ones.
The first showed the Gonzales family on a skiing holiday. Rugged up in their ski gear against the brisk weather, a happy couple were clearly enjoying watching their two young children at play.
The second photograph was taken at the family’s house in Blacktown. A small Sef, dressed in a light blue jumper declaring ‘I Love Soccer’, was unsmiling, as his father, wearing shaded glasses, hugged him. Teddy wore a grin. Also smiling were Loiva to his right and a young Clodine.
One happy family.
Sef then led us to a central wooden staircase. It spiralled upstairs, onto a landing. This was the floor where Clodine had been found, in her bedroom, slumped against a wall near her bed. In a central area connecting the bedrooms were stacks of colourful women’s clothing, which Loiva had taken so much pride in.
A table with religious ornaments was pushed up near a door. ‘The police must have moved it,’ Sef said distractedly, dragging it across the wooden floorboards and pushing it against the rail of the staircase. ‘This is where my mother used to pray with her rosary. It’s right in the centre of the house,’ he said. He allowed us to take photographs as he stood beside the table, with its statue of the Virgin Mary and other religious symbols.
Clearly, the visit was taking its toll on Sef. Photographs taken, he sat down on the stairs and asked for a few minutes to himself. We walked back down the staircase and through the front door as Sef cradled his face in his hands.
A few minutes passed before Sef came outside into the afternoon sun, his eyes reddened, but with no tears visible. ‘I’m okay now,’ he said, offering a brave half-smile.