Mick Sheehy received the call late at night on Friday, 31 May 2002. Channel Ten had aired its interview with Sef, but the Daily Telegraph had yet to hit the streets.
Chatswood police had been notified of an assault at Beauchamp Park, on the corner of Havilah Road and Nicholson Street, Chatswood, around 8.30 pm. Ambulance officers had found Sef Gonzales lying in a gutter with a plastic shopping bag near his head. His car was parked nearby, and Sef later told police he had been on his way to a video shop when he was attacked.
Sef was transported to Royal North Shore Hospital. He complained of pain in his stomach, head, back, chest and groin. He appeared confused and disoriented, possibly suffering amnesia. Sef said he remembered working that morning with his father and having lunch with both his parents. Doctors examined Sef and found no apparent injuries. He underwent a CT scan for brain injury, but the scan results proved normal.
A short time later Sef appeared to recover his memory. He indicated that he had been assaulted, around 7.15 pm, because he had spoken to the media. He informed police that his attackers had dragged him into a car, put a plastic bag over his head and tied his hands together with plastic bands. They told him that he had been warned not to speak to the media and then he was knocked unconscious. He also told police that his attackers told him they knew where his grandmother, Amelita, lived.
Sef was cleared by doctors to leave the hospital shortly after 2 am. He told me two days later that he would prefer not to discuss the incident, as he was too distressed. ‘I’m still recovering,’ he said. He said the incident was being investigated by police, separate to his family’s murder investigation. ‘Other detectives are working on that part of it. I just have to wait.’
The abduction attempt on Sef Gonzales remains unsolved. Obviously, Tawas detectives were sceptical. Paul Auglys’s suspicions were heightened when he went to notify Linda Pham. He was almost positive she was trying to suppress a grin when he informed her of the incident.
THE DAY BEFORE Sef granted interviews to the media and was allegedly abducted, he told police that he had received two threatening e-mails. The first e-mail had self-destructed when he tried to save it on his computer, he said. Sef showed the second dramatic e-mail to police. It read:
Make it easy on yourself. Confess to the police now. We know where you live in Sydney. I know you have a girlfriend. We will do what we have [sic] if you don’t. If you care for your friends or relatives, confess!!! This is your last warning. If you offer a reward we will kill you. You cannot bring back your family. Your father deserved to die. Confess!! We have been watching you. Don’t talk to reporters. You have a week to confess.
Police traced the e-mail as having been sent from the Sydney City Internet Café eight days before, on 22 May 2002. Unfortunately, rotating video footage picked up no likely suspects.
On the same day as he told police about the e-mails, Sef reported the attempted break-in at his unit. He told police that he had woken between 2 am and 3 am to the sound of shuffling noises at his front door. Police inspected the front door and found three fairly superficial gouge marks near the lock. They did not believe Sef. They formed the view that either he had made the gouge marks himself, or that they had already been on the door.
THE DAY THE Daily Telegraph hit the streets carrying Sef Gonzales’ story, a well-meaning member of the public called the Crime Stoppers hotline to give the officers from Tawas some information.
The caller said she knew her tip was a long shot, but she felt compelled to pass it on. She reminded the police about the murder of a twenty-year-old western Sydney woman in 1996. Edwina Powell had been stabbed to death by a pizza delivery man in her Kingsgrove unit. The caller said that the killer, Rouben Diaz, was Filipino and that he had written in blood on the walls. (Some early media reports on the Gonzales murders incorrectly reported that the racist scrawl on the wall at Collins Street was written in blood.) Diaz may well have been on day release from psychiatric care when the Gonzales murders occurred.
In June 2002, Rouben Diaz, then aged 25, was still under psychiatric care. He had been found not guilty of Edwina Powell’s murder by reason of insanity. But once the tip was passed to officers at Tawas, they were obliged to follow it up. So Auglys and Detective Senior Constable Darren Murphy visited Cumberland Psychiatric Hospital to find out what Diaz’s movements had been for the period of the Gonzales murders. (Coincidentally, it was the same hospital that Teddy’s office received a call from the day of the murders.)
The staff at Cumberland Hospital were not keen to let the officers inspect Diaz’s medical file, lists of visitors and telephone calls made and received, or reveal details of his movements on 10 July 2001. However, Auglys managed to speak to Diaz himself. He told Auglys he had been on release the day of the Gonzales murders to attend a religious conference at Homebush SuperDome. He said he had gone there with his brother and brother’s girlfriend, who had picked him up from the hospital at 5 pm, taking him straight to the conference then back to the hospital, dropping him off at 10 pm. He could not remember going anywhere else except the conference that night. Diaz’s brother confirmed that he and his girlfriend had taken Rouben to the religious conference and that Rouben had not left his sight the whole time.
Later, police got a warrant to seize Rouben Diaz’s medical documents, which showed he had in fact left Cumberland at 11 am that day, gone to the city with his brother, then to his father’s house and on to Homebush, returning to his hospital ward at 11 pm. Any further attempts, however, to interview Rouben Diaz or his brother’s girlfriend were stymied by the Diaz family’s lawyer.
Tawas had checked out the lead, but could not go any further. In view of the mass of evidence gathered against Sef Gonzales, however, Tawas detectives did not lose any sleep over the former pizza delivery boy.