After an arduous night, Sef and his Uncle Joseph went back to Joseph’s North Sydney home on the morning of 11 July 2001 to get a few hours’ sleep. They would need it for the ordeal they would face that afternoon, when they were to attend Glebe morgue, in Sydney’s Inner West, to formally identify the bodies of Teddy, Loiva and Clodine. Joseph had agreed to be the relative to conduct the formal identification, and Sef had also asked to be present. That was no problem for Sheehy, as he could organise for one of the morgue’s counsellors to speak to Sef.
The identification would prove to be a relatively quick, clinical procedure. Neither Sef nor Joseph would visibly break down, although it must have been traumatising as they were shown the bodies of their loved ones through a viewing window. Joseph would simply be asked, ‘Is this the body of Teddy Gonzales . . . Mary Gonzales . . . Clodine Gonzales?’ and be requested to sign documents formally identifying each of them, which he did.
At 9 am that morning, at Gladesville police station, McKay, Sheehy, Ashwood and Sly held a briefing with some of the local police officers. It soon became obvious to Sheehy that a good many of them had already formed the same opinion: that Sef Gonzales was the killer. Sheehy made a comment that would earn him a fair bit of ribbing from his colleagues down the track. He argued they should be focusing on a wider group of possible suspects. He stated his belief that Sef’s statement to him early that morning had been so precise about times and locations of events that he held some doubt as to whether Sef was the killer. They should also be considering other possible suspects, Sheehy felt. He thought about the mobile telephone calls and SMS messages Sef had referred to in his statement, and was convinced that young kids today knew all about how mobile phones worked, so it was unlikely he would have made that up.
The media were clamouring for more details of the triple murder, and the pressure to solve the case was already on, from the then New South Wales Police Commissioner, Peter Ryan, down. Strike Force Tawas, a name generated at random by the police computer, was quickly formed, and the officers who were to comprise it would meet McKay and Sheehy at the murder scene later that morning.
The New South Wales Homicide Squad, like most police agencies, was overburdened with active investigations. So police from other detective squads were also allocated to Tawas. From the Violent and Major Offenders Unit — since renamed the Robbery and Serious Crime Squad — came Detective Sergeant Tony Polito, who had previous homicide experience, and Detective Senior Constable Paul Auglys.
The South East Asian Crime Squad also provided two officers: Detective Senior Constables Shaun Ryan and Brian O’Donoghue. For all anyone knew at the time, this could have been an Asian organised-crime hit. At this early stage, no-one really knew much about Teddy Gonzales’ business dealings, or whether Sef was tied up with an Asian crime gang.
Mick Sheehy and Detective Senior Constable Ritchie Sim, from Homicide, were also allocated to Strike Force Tawas. Both were supposedly there for the short term.
Detective Inspector Geoff Leonard, a seasoned homicide investigator, was appointed commander, giving him managerial oversight of each line of investigation.
The investigation started big. At first, it was all hands on deck as a mass of leads that needed to be checked out were identified. Over time, other serious crimes occurred, and some officers were pulled onto other jobs, and new faces would take their place.
Of the original team, Detectives Sheehy and Auglys would be there from start to finish. Leonard would also be there at the finish, but he would miss about a year of what would become a three-year investigation, as he recovered from a serious illness.
In those first few frantic days, when investigators worked up to eighteen hours a day before collapsing into bed for a few hours’ sleep, crucial information — much of it damning towards Sef Gonzales — would come to light. It was safe to say he became one of a tiny number of suspects.
Much of the evidence came from the painstaking work of crime-scene analysts, who were crawling over the Gonzales house from the early hours of 11 July. These analysts formed the view that the crime scene had been staged to indicate that there had been an intruder in the house, whereas other evidence at the scene pointed to items in the house being used to commit the murders. Why, it was asked from this early stage, would an intruder intent on triple murder come to the scene of the crime so ill prepared as to grab any available object from within the home to use as a weapon?
An example of this contradictory evidence was that a flyscreen had been removed from the kitchen window above the sink, cut in several places, and placed against a brick wall at the back of the house. The window itself was open, but there were no pry marks on the frame or latch to indicate a serious attempt to break in through a locked window. There were no shoe prints on the sink or kitchen benchtop.
In the study, the phone landline connection cable had been cut in a rather amateurish way. On one side of the cable there was a sharp, clean cut, but it didn’t go all the way through the cable. The other side of the cable sported a jagged tear, as if the person doing the cutting had decided mid-task just to yank the cable apart.
Also, in the family room adjoining the open-plan kitchen at the rear of the ground floor a racist slur had been scrawled in blue spray paint on the pale Gyprock wall. Officers were confronted by capital letters that screamed ‘FUCK OFF ASIANS’. Underneath, right above the floor, squeezed into the right-hand corner in smaller capitals, was ‘KKK’, an apparent reference to white supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan.
To the left of this obscenity, a glass sliding door stood open at the rear of the side of the house behind the external laundry door. It would have allowed anyone who decided to come around to the back of the house to investigate why the Gonzales were not answering their phone or doorbell to be confronted with the writing straightaway, and their suspicions to be aroused.
As well, Teddy was carrying close to $700 cash and Loiva had $300. It was untouched, as were the various expensive pieces of jewellery and electronic equipment in the house. Robbery by an intruder was ruled out as a motive.
Near Teddy’s body, his briefcase lay open, spilling papers, in what appeared to be an organised state of disarray. There was blood underneath his briefcase. The contents of Loiva’s handbag — keys, tissues and other paraphernalia — had been similarly spilled onto the ground near her body. There was blood underneath these items too. Surely, if Loiva and Teddy had been attacked and forced to drop their belongings as they struggled with her assailant, the blood would be on top of the items, not underneath. To crime scene officers, it was apparent that Teddy’s briefcase and Loiva’s handbag had been placed on the ground and emptied after the blood was shed.
Around all three bodies, as well as in the ground-floor hallway leading to the family room–kitchen area and on the spiral staircase to the upstairs floor, were the tracks of bloodied shoe prints. Crime-scene officers used chemicals to enhance the shoe prints to a deep purple colour. Upstairs in Sef’s bedroom — immaculately tidy apart from the open doors and drawers — officers checked his collection of shoes. Their attention was drawn to a cardboard shoebox containing his hair clippers. The box was for a Human brand, Rhythm model shoe, size UK 7/US 8. The label read ‘Insport’ — a sporting goods shop — and carried a pricing label of $79.95. Tawas officers rushed out to track down a pair of the laceless running shoes to check the sole impression they left. Bingo! There was a perfect match between shoe print impressions left in blood near the bodies and the sole of a Human brand, Rhythm model shoe, size UK 7/US 8. But as the search of the house continued, the pair of shoes that had left the prints would elude them. They were nowhere to be found at the scene. Were they used by the killer and later discarded, along with the clothes the killer had worn, because they were bloody? It seemed a likely scenario.
On the Gyprock wall above where Clodine’s body had been found in her upstairs bedroom was a series of curious impressions — elongated semicircles. Crime-scene analyst Detective Sergeant Robert Gibbs, conducting an experiment on another piece of Gyprock, bashed it with numerous objects to see which one left the most similar impressions. He used chair legs, table legs, an axe, a spade handle and a number of baseball and T-ball bats. A black-painted aluminium T-ball bat, slightly smaller than a baseball bat, left the most similar impression.
In a corner of the kitchen, near a spice rack and small potted plant, stood a cylindrical metallic block built to contain six Global brand knives. The two largest knives, the largest non-serrated and the second-largest serrated, were missing from the set. Were they the murder weapons? As with the Human brand shoes, Tawas officers would purchase an identical set of Global knives so that they could be measured against the wounds on the bodies.
FORENSIC PATHOLOGIST Dr Allan Cala performed the postmortems of Teddy, Loiva and Clodine at Glebe morgue on 12 and 13 July 2001.
Postmortem examinations are crucial to determining the cause of death and can also give an approximation of the time of death. Needless to say, this information was vital to Tawas investigators. According to Sef, he had located the bodies approximately between 11 pm and midnight on 10 July, and Clodine had still been gushing blood. Sef’s statement had also suggested the killers had been in the house when he arrived home after dinner with Sam Dacillo.
The postmortems ruled out shooting in the case of all three victims. Instead, they painted a grim picture of a knife, or possibly knives, being wielded with great ferocity, and all three victims fighting in vain to ward off their attacker.
Dr Cala began with Teddy at 9 am on 12 July.
Teddy stood about five feet six inches and was stocky in a fit way, but the force used on him was vastly greater than that necessary to inflict death. He had been stabbed five times in the neck, one of the blows passing through the jugular vein (which drains blood from the head back towards the heart) and the carotid artery (which supplies blood to the head). He had been stabbed seven times in the chest, the wounds penetrating his right lung and his heart. Teddy had also been stabbed twice in the back, and one blow had partially severed his spinal cord. The wound would not have caused Teddy to lose consciousness but it may well have caused paraplegia of his lower body and a loss of sensation down one side. After that particular blow had been inflicted, Teddy Gonzales had probably been rendered unable to fight back, or his struggles would have weakened considerably.
But Teddy, a martial arts devotee who had trained with Sef in the family garage, had struggled quite hard at some point during the attack. His left arm bore three stab wounds and there were four cuts to his left fingers. He also bore four cuts to his right hand and fingers. Teddy had used his hands to try to ward off the blows.
Dr Cala reached the conclusion Teddy had died some time between 3 pm and 10 pm on 10 July 2001, due to multiple stab wounds.
Loiva Gonzales’ postmortem began at 2 pm that same day. Her face had been cut, and on her neck were multiple stab wounds which had severed her trachea. Her throat had also been slit.
The attacker had stabbed Loiva in the back, the left chest, the central chest, the right breast, the lower chest, the abdomen and the right groin area. Her right elbow was cut, as were her right fingers; these were defence wounds. The attack had been a frenzy, an overkill. Given the location of some of the wounds, one or two would have dealt a fatal blow.
Dr Cala decided Loiva had died some time between 1 pm and 6 pm of multiple stab wounds.
It was not until 9 am the next day that Dr Cala began his analysis of Clodine Gonzales’ injuries. They were more complex than those of her parents. She had been bashed, stabbed and choked, and it was a combination of all three actions that had killed her. The eighteen-year-old had suffered.
At least six blows to Clodine’s head, however, had caused massive injuries. On the left side of Clodine’s head above her ear were a skull fracture and bruising to the scalp. Her brain had bled, shaken around her skull by the trauma. These blows may have rendered her unconscious, but they also may not have. In Dr Cala’s opinion, the blows were not caused by a sharp object such as a knife or broken glass, or even by someone’s fist. To his mind, the attacker had used a blunt object, something like a piece of timber or a brick. Other possibilities were a cricket bat or baseball bat.
Clodine also had two stab wounds to the right side of her lower chest. They had caused massive damage, passing through the liver into her diaphragm, penetrating her stomach, right kidney and aorta as well as the inferior vena cava, the large vein that sits next to the aorta and carries blood back to the heart.
There were tiny pinprick haemorrhages on Clodine’s eyelids and cheeks, and bruising to her neck and jaw, indicating her throat had been compressed, depriving her of oxygen. Due to the absence of any ligature marks, it was likely to have been done by someone’s hands. Her neck also bore five serious and six superficial stab wounds which had injured her larynx. Her cheek and the areas around her ears and the back of her neck and head also bore cuts and stab wounds.
There were also signs of defence wounds on Clodine’s hands and wrists, in particular, a cut to her right thumb. Dr Cala was leaning towards the theory that Clodine’s neck was compressed first, then the head injuries inflicted, before the attacker started his grisly work with the knife.
Analysis of Clodine’s clotted blood at the scene by bloodspatter expert Dr Tony Raymond also gave a good insight into the timeframe of the injuries. The arc of blood smeared from the wall to the floor, where Clodine’s head came to rest, suggested she had been sitting upright, or leaning upright against the wall, before being moved at least a couple of minutes, and perhaps many minutes, after the assault to her head. After that, as she lay with her face to the ground, she was still breathing, albeit in a tortured way. This was deduced from the bubbles in the clotted blood on the floor, beneath her nose. There was a distinct lack of blood, however, on Clodine’s red jumper, which lay over her body. Curiously, it appeared to have been draped over her after the attacker had finished. It covered her stab wounds.
Clodine had died within a similar timeframe to her mother: between 1 pm and 6 pm.
Comparing his measurements of the stab wounds with an identical knife provided to him by police, Dr Cala concluded the missing knife could have been the murder weapon. In Dr Cala’s opinion, the knife used by the killer was non-serrated. A serrated-edge blade — like the second-largest Global knife — would have left serration marks on the wounds. Of all the stab wounds inflicted that night at 6 Collins Street, only a single one on Loiva showed some form of serration. That could have been explained, however, by her skin being pulled as that particular wound was inflicted.
Dr Cala’s conclusion about the murder weapon assisted Tawas investigators from the point of view that the largest missing Global knife could have been used, but many other readily available brands of knives also could have inflicted the same wounds.
The times of death were of more assistance, as they pinned down the periods of time police had to focus on when they considered a suspect’s alibi. The crucial time period was 1 pm to 10 pm.
OF COURSE THE police quickly tried to narrow down the timeframe, using the telephone records of all three victims.
It had already been established that both Teddy and Loiva went to work at Teddy’s law practice, T Gonzales & Associates, on the morning of 10 July. Loiva was Teddy’s office manager at the practice, which specialised in immigration law.
Clodine Gonzales had been at 6 Collins Street in the afternoon. The family had celebrated her eighteenth birthday the night before.
At 4.04 pm, Clodine had sent an SMS text message from her mobile telephone to that of a schoolfriend, Vanessa O’Mera, along the lines of ‘Hey, how are you, how was Muriel’s party?’ As far as police could determine, this was the last confirmed communication Clodine had with anyone — except her killer, of course.
At 4.50 pm the same day, Loiva had left her husband’s office on Kildare Road, Blacktown, with Teddy’s office receptionist, Patricia Tonel, in Loiva’s car. Loiva dropped Tonel off at Blacktown post office before heading home. Tonel would be the last known person to have any contact with Loiva — again, aside from her killer.
Teddy Gonzales’ mobile telephone had made two calls to his home phone, at 6.20 pm and 6.23 pm. Both these calls lasted three seconds. From telephone records, police determined Teddy was somewhere in the Wentworthville area, a short drive from his Blacktown office, when he made these calls, which went unanswered. This was the last time Teddy tried to telephone anyone.
Police began to work on the theory that Clodine had been killed first, probably attacked in her bedroom while studying at her desk, where her books lay open. She had probably been killed around 4.30 pm. Loiva was next, as she arrived home about 5.30 pm. And Teddy was killed last, as he got home close to 7 pm.
This gave the investigators something else to consider about the nature of the crime. The killer was calculating, and had the stomach to wait inside the house, risking discovery, with the bodies of his victims until the next one came home. Of course, according to Sef’s statement, that killer or killers, with nerves of steel, had waited some four hours inside the house, only to flee when Sef came home. It didn’t make sense.