11 July 2001, 1 am
Detective Senior Constable Mick Sheehy of the New South Wales Homicide Squad was on call the night of the Gonzales murders. He was woken from his sleep by a telephone call summoning him to Collins Street, North Ryde. Being on call means that you must be available to attend a crime scene at any hour over a seven-day period. Every homicide officer has his or her turn. Sometimes, you can go a whole week without a murder; other times you are run off your feet. It was Sheehy’s last night on call for the week, and until then he had not been called out once.
The married father of two young children, Mick had recently scored a promotion within Homicide, but he was a few months off officially becoming a Detective Sergeant. Two years before he had joined the Homicide Squad after a ten-year stint in drugs investigation, at the end of which he felt his career had begun to stagnate. The Homicide Squad was generally viewed as the elite of the New South Wales Police Force, the place to be, and Sheehy wanted a new challenge.
Sheehy had kind of fallen into becoming a cop. Leaving school at the age of sixteen, he got a job as an aircraft maintenance engineer, in which he worked alongside some tough nuts. He also worked in bars as a doorman. During this period Sheehy learned to get on with people from all walks of life. His first love was rugby union, and by the time he decided to enter the force, he was a second rower with the Dirty Reds, a first-grade team in Drummoyne, in Sydney’s Inner West. He was 22, and extremely fit, with a big build. At almost two metres, or six feet five inches, Sheehy cut an imposing figure.
He had got to know serving police officers through footy, and the lifestyle seemed attractive. Every day was a new adventure — you never knew what you would be confronted with — and there was a lot of travel involved. Plus, the force was encouraging entry by sports-minded people, and he could keep playing his beloved rugby.
Sheehy’s attitude to policing was that it was 80 per cent common sense, and 20 per cent legislation. If you had the ability to talk to people, and could develop a rapport with them, you’d be a good cop. This theory was reinforced by his training in negotiation and undercover work. He found he did not often have to use confrontation, as his physical stature meant not many crooks wanted to tangle with him. In fact, he found that most criminals, whether they were drug importers or armed robbers, responded better to praise than menacing. You just needed to pat them on the back, tell them what good crooks they were, and they couldn’t help but brag.
In short, Sheehy believed you caught more flies with honey.
All Sheehy was told in that 1 am phone call was that he would be attending the scene of a family murder. Also attending would be Detective Sergeant Mick Ashwood and Detective Senior Constable Darren Sly. They were to be coordinated by their team leader, Detective Inspector Kim McKay.
Of all these officers, Sheehy lived closest to the scene. He was the first to arrive, pulling up at 1.35 am. The ambulance officers were still milling around, as were the uniformed police. Sheehy got a quick rundown from the ‘locals’ before organising for the area to be sealed off with crime-scene tape.
As the other homicide officers started to arrive, Ashwood was placed in charge of crime-scene management. This meant ensuring no unauthorised person trespassed into the sealed-off area, as well as coordinating the roles of those who would search for evidence. Lighting had to be rigged up so the coroner’s staff could examine the bodies and the forensics team could do their work, scouring the house for clues and spreading black fingerprinting dust on surfaces to try to determine the killer’s identity.
Sly was assigned the role of canvassing witnesses outside the crime scene. He ran the doorknock of neighbours in the immediate vicinity that night to find out if anyone had noticed something amiss that evening, and also recorded the registration numbers of all the vehicles in the area. While this might not be immediately useful, it could prove essential at a later stage if a suspect emerged and vehicle registration checks showed the suspect had been near the murder scene that night.
As Sheehy walked to the Gonzales’ garage, he met up with Bob Betts. At first Sheehy was not aware of the small figure sitting against the garage wall, a blanket over his head. Betts informed him that Sef was the son who had discovered the murder victims. Sef was extremely emotional, but quiet.
Sheehy tried to draw him out, to get a rapport going. He needed to find out where Sef had been that night and what time he had arrived home. He was not trying to get Sef’s alibi at this stage, just ascertain the basic facts.
Sheehy thought it was strange that Sef was able to focus and pull himself together to give organised answers after finding his family members murdered. One of the uniformed officers, Constable Scott Tozer, had mentioned that Sef had talked about how the attackers had brushed past him as they fled the house, and Sheehy had the ambulance officers check Sef for injury. Physically, Sef was unharmed.
Sheehy took Sef out to his car and sat him in the passenger seat, asking whom police should contact to inform relatives. Sef suggested his aunt, Emily Luna, his mother’s sister. However, he could not remember Aunt Emily’s number, so Cecile Ferrer, Emily’s cousin on her mother’s side of the family, was contacted. She would be able to alert Emily.
At this stage, Sheehy was treating Sef as a victim of crime. Even though Sef’s demeanour at the scene seemed suspicious, Sheehy didn’t allow himself to dwell on it, striving to be open-minded.
For other homicide officers, also, suspicions were building, fuelled by the fact that Sef had found the bodies and was the only surviving family member. At one point, Sheehy walked past Darren Sly, out of Sef’s earshot. ‘He did it,’ Sly told his colleague, indicating Sef.
Sheehy wanted to pin Sef down to his version of what had happened that night, and as quickly as possible. Sef could have information that would be vital to the investigation.
At Gladesville police station, the incident room was being set up by Kim McKay. About 3 am, Sheehy drove Sef there to make his statement, having never actually entered the Gonzales house that night.