Murderpedia has thousands of hours of work behind it. To keep creating
new content, we kindly appreciate any donation you can give to help
the Murderpedia project stay alive. We have many
plans and enthusiasm
to keep expanding and making Murderpedia a better site, but we really
need your help for this. Thank you very much in advance.
Sef GONZALES
Classification: Murderer
Characteristics:
Parricide
Number of victims: 3
Date of murders:
July 10,
2001
Date of birth:
September 16,
1980
Victims profile: His
father, Teddy, 46, mother Mary Loiva Josephine, 43, and
sister Clodine, 18
Method of murder: Stabbing
with knife
Location: North
Ryde, New South Wales, Australia
Status:
Sentenced
to three life terms without parole
on September 17, 2004
Sef Gonzales
(born September 16, 1980) is an Australian who was convicted and
sentenced in the Supreme Court of New South Wales to life
imprisonment for the murder of his father, Teddy, 46, mother
Mary Loiva Josephine, 43, and sister Clodine, 18.
Background
Sef
Gonzales was born in Baguio, Philippines to a locally
prominent family.
After
the 1990 earthquake, Teddy and Mary Loiva emigrated to
Australia with their two children. Teddy carved out a
career as an immigration lawyer. The Gonzales family
appeared to be a close-knit family, the parents being
strict and devout and having high hopes for their
children.
Later court
evidence suggested that the Gonzales were a controlling family
who would enforce harsh discipline on their children had they
not met their parents' high expectations.
In particular,
Teddy and Mary Loiva had hoped that Sef would perform well
academically, but he did not fare well in his HSC and performed
poorly in his university courses. Clodine had been sent to
Melbourne to complete high school, after her mother disapproved
of her boyfriend.
Some observed
that Sef had a penchant for stretching the truth and outright
lying to impress people, with Walter Mitty-like fantasies in
which he imagined himself to be a successful businessman, model
and singer. (A website supposedly run by the daughter of a
family friend, Daisy Diaz, as a "tribute" was in fact set up by
Gonzales himself.)
Others have
remarked that he had an essentially narcissistic personality and
was a compulsive or pathological liar. However, to many people
the lies were believable because of his apparent sincerity. He
also falsely told friends that he was suffering from cancer.
Sef attempted
to cover up his academic failure by falsifying results, and when
this was discovered by his parents they had threatened to
withdraw certain privileges such as use of his car. At the same
time, he had argued with his mother over a girlfriend she had
disapproved of. This along with the desire to inherit the
family's fortune were established as motives for Gonzales
killing his parents and sister.
The murders
On July 10, 2001,
about 4.30pm Gonzales entered Clodine’s bedroom, where
she was studying. He was armed with a baseball bat or a
bat similar to a baseball bat and with two kitchen
knives he had taken from a knife block in the kitchen.
These two knives were the longest knives in the set of
knives in the block. It was found that he compressed
Clodine’s neck trying to strangle her, struck her at
least six separate blows to the head with the bat and
stabbed her many times with one or both of the knives.
He inflicted five major stab wounds to Clodine’s neck
and two major stab wounds to her chest or abdomen. The
cause of Clodine’s death was the combined effect of the
compression of her neck, the blunt force head injuries
and the abdominal stab wounds.
Mary Loiva arrived home about 5.30pm.
Immediately upon entering the house, Sef attacked her
with one of the kitchen knives in the living/dining room.
Gonzales inflicted multiple stab wounds and cuts to her
face, neck, chest and abdomen. Her windpipe was
completely transected in the attack.
Teddy arrived about 6.50pm. Very
shortly after he entered the house, Sef attacked him
with one of the kitchen knives and inflicted multiple
stab wounds to his neck, chest, back and abdomen. One of
the stab wounds penetrated his right lung, another
penetrated his heart and another partially severed his
spinal cord.
After killing his family, Gonzales
disposed of the knife (or knives) he had used as well as
the bat he had used in striking Clodine and the shoes
and clothing he had been wearing at the time of
committing the murders, which had become blood stained.
At some time in the evening, he also spray painted the
words “Fuck off Asians KKK” on a wall in the house in an
attempt to fool investigating police into believing that
his family had been the victims of a hate crime.
After the murders
After committing the murders,
Gonzales drove to a friend's house, arriving there about
8pm. Sef and his friend, Sam Deilio (who neither knew or
was told anything about the murders), went to the city,
where they went to Planet Hollywood and then to a nearby
video games centre. Later in the evening, after dropping
his friend off, Gonzales returned home. He called police
to say he had discovered the bodies on his arrival at
the house, and that he had chased off intruders.
Gonzales attracted sympathy after he
sang "One Sweet Day" at the funeral and appeared on
television asking for the killers to come forward,
saying he wanted justice and offering a reward of
$100,000 for information.
The investigation heads up
However, police investigating the
murders began to believe that he was the perpetrator. In
December, investigating police were able to disprove
Gonzales' first alibi, when they were told of sightings
of his car in the driveway at the time of the murders.
Gonzales then constructed a second alibi, claiming he
had visited a brothel at the time of the murders, but
this was proven to be false by the prostitute who he
claimed to be with at the time.
Other false trails were the
fabrication of an e-mail that implicated a business
rival of Teddy in the murders, the fabrication of
threatening e-mails, and the staging of an attempted
burglary and an abduction. Sef also put a deposit on a
$173,000 Lexus, telling the dealership he would be using
his inheritance to pay for the vehicle, traded in his
parent's car and pawned his mother's jewellery.
Murder trial
On June 13,
2002, after advancing two false alibis, police arrested Sef
Gonzales and charged him with three counts of murder, holding
him in Silverwater Correctional Centre. He was denied access to
the family's estate to fund his defence.
The murder
trial took place during April and May 2004. Apart from the
above-mentioned motives, the trial had revealed that Gonzales
had planned the murders for several months before they took
place. Initially he intended to carry out an elaborate
contamination hoax, searching the Internet for poisonous plants.
The trial also
heard of numerous lies to his friends, family and police
surrounding his whereabouts at the time of the murders, which
some feel was consistent with his characteristic lying.
On May 20,
2004, the jury found Gonzales guilty on the three counts of
murder. He was sentenced on September 17 to three life terms
without parole, making him one of the youngest "lifers" in
Australia. Gonzales is now serving his terms as a maximum
security inmate at Goulburn Correctional Centre.
The case,
which has since become one of Australia's most notorious murder
cases, may draw comparisons to California's Menendez Brothers
case.
Appeal
In June 2007 Gonzales
was granted approval to appeal his conviction and his
sentence. The Supreme Court determined that statements
taken from Gonzales by police on the night of the
murders may be inadmissible, as he was not cautioned. On
27 November 2007, Sef Gonzales' appeal was dismissed as
there had been no miscarriage of justice, and his
convictions remained.
Sale of
Gonzales home
The North Ryde
house where the murders took place has since been put on the
market, arousing controversy in October 2004 when the
prospective buyers had not been informed of the events that took
place there, finding out from a newspaper only when the balance
of the sale value was due.
After this was
publicised, the state government made it illegal to sell a house
without disclosing murders that took place in it. The agents
eventually refunded the deposit on their purchase and the house
was re-sold in November 2005 to a buyer who was aware of the
house's history for $80 000 less than the initial sale.
Wikipedia.org
Family killed because they were 'in the way'
By
Lee Glendinning
April 6, 2004
Looming in front
of Sef Gonzales was a life that seemed to him to be falling
apart.
To deal with it he
decided to kill his family with poisonous beans because they
were proving a threat to the life he wanted to lead, Crown
Prosecutor Mark Tedeschi, QC, said yesterday.
Gonzales, 20, had
failed a bridging course in medicine at University of NSW and
was facing expulsion from a "pre-law" course at Macquarie
University.
The girl he
believed he was in love with had returned to her boyfriend after
a brief liaison and his mother had warned she disapproved of
her.
Killing his
parents would also mean Gonzales would inherit considerable
wealth, Sydney's Darlinghurst Criminal Court was told. So,
logging on to the internet, he typed into a search engine:
"Methods of killing".
It was there he
learned of the poisonous beans that would kill in three days and
leave no obvious sign of how death occurred, the court heard.
The sites
explained how to mix the beans with food, and the way symptoms -
such as convulsions and severe viral pain, would gradually set
in and cause a slow and painful death.
The court was told
Gonzales placed orders for the beans from a site in the US and a
company in Byron Bay.
To set up a
"smokescreen", the Crown alleges, Gonzales decided to create a
false food contamination scare at a major company, typing a
letter: "3 of your products have been poisoned. By now they are
on supermarket shelves. This is what you get for treating
employees like garbage. Good luck finding infected cans before
someone dies. Go to hell!!!"
He sent similar
letters to the Australian Quarantine Inspection Service and the
Australian Federal Police pretending to be an employee who had
heard the products had been sabotaged, the court heard. These
letters were received on July 2, 2001.
Eight days later,
his sister Clodine Gonzales, 18, his mother, Mary Loiva, 43, and
his father, Teddy, 46, were stabbed to death in their home in
Collins Street, North Ryde.
Gonzales had
failed to kill his family with his first plan - despite his
mother being admitted to hospital with what they thought was
food poisoning, Mr Tedeschi told the court.
So he decided
instead, the court heard, to stab his family to death.
Around lunchtime
on July 10, 2001, he went to his father's Blacktown office to
help fix a computer. He left that afternoon, arriving home some
time between 4.10 and 4.30pm, the Crown alleges.
His sister, Ms
Gonzales, was home alone. He bashed her viciously and stabbed
her multiple times, Mr Tedeschi said.
Gonzales next
killed his mother when she arrived home, stabbing her in the
lounge room, the court heard. Teddy Gonzales was killed last as
he walked in to the house.
All three, the
court heard, were attacked with much more force than was
necessary to kill them. "This was not a professional killing,"
Mr Tedeschi said. "This was a slaughter by an angry amateur who
wanted to make absolutely sure they were dead but had no idea
how many times he would need to stab them in order to cause
death."
Gonzales then went
out to dinner in the city with a friend and returned at 11.45pm,
the court heard.
After seeing only
the body of his father, he rang triple 0.
"Please come,
someone has, someone is at my parents, killed my family... they
are all bleeding there on the floor."
Painted on the
wall was a message: "F--k off asians. KKK."
Mr Tedeschi says
Gonzales then began his litany of lies to police, his family and
friends.
He told them after
calling triple 0 he had heard a noise downstairs and ran to see
who it was. He chased one or two men, he said, but they
disappeared.
The trial continues.
'Family killer' wanted to poison himself, court told
April
6, 2004
A student accused
of slaughtering his family told his then girlfriend that he had
bought poisonous seeds not to kill them but himself and make it
look like cancer, a Sydney court heard today. But the
prosecution described the claim as an "absurdity"
Sef Gonzales has
pleaded not guilty in the NSW Supreme Court to murdering his
parents, Teddy and Mary Loiva, and his 18-year-old sister
Clodine at their North Ryde home on July 10, 2001.
Crown Prosecutor
Mark Tedeschi, QC, said the now 23-year-old stabbed to death his
family, one by one, over a three-hour period.
He also said that
a week before the murders the then student tried to poison his
family with highly toxic seeds he bought over the internet.
The court today
heard that Gonzales told his then girlfriend in early 2002 he
had bought the seeds to commit suicide and thought they "would
destroy his internal organs to make it look like cancer".
"Apart from the
obvious absurdity of someone feigning death from cancer from
poison that took effect in three days there are other facts that
show he had no intention of killing himself at all," Mr Tedeschi
said.
He said Gonzales
had falsely told his friends for years he had cancer to elicit
sympathy.
Sef Gonzales
Gonzales lay in wait and stabbed his lawyer father Teddy, mother
Mary Loiva and 18-year-old sister Clodine to death at their home
on July 10, 2001.
Senior crown prosecutor Mark Tedeschi, QC, yesterday began
outlining the case in the Supreme Court against the 23-year-old,
who faces three murder counts.
Gonzales, who clutched rosary beads and prayed
quietly in court yesterday, answered
"not guilty" to all counts.
Mr Tedeschi told the jury that Gonzales killed his parents
because his life was "unravelling".
Gonzales' parents placed very high expectations on their son,
who they believed could become a doctor or laywer, but he was a
poor student and faced expulsion from his university course.
He had also just had a brief fling with a girl four years his
senior. While she broke up with him after they had sex, he
saw that as only a minor hurdle in their relationship. :blink:
Mr Tedeschi said Gonzales was concerned
his mother did not approve of the girl.
The final motive, it is alleged, was Gonzales
would have access his parent's $1.5 million estate. Mr Tedeschi said Gonzales asked his father's accountant, within a week of
the murders, how much the estate was worth.
Shortly after the murder he pawned his mother's jewellery and
the family's three cars.
He then put down a deposit on a $173,000 Lexus SC
430, which
he was unable to buy because he could not access his parent's
estate.
Mr Tedeschi said Gonzales sent the letter to the food and
beverage company in conjunction with another note to quarantine
authorities and Australian Federal Police, purportedly from
"concerned employees".
The letter stated the food and beverage company was covering up
the threat and putting public safety at risk.
Mr Tedeschi said Gonzales searched the internet for methods of
killing before deciding on two highly toxic poisons which could
be made from seeds.
He discovered instructions, such as how to make the poisons, how
to mix them in a person's food, and recognising symptoms such as
vomiting, diarrhoea and death, he said.
There were also e-mails ordering the seeds placed from Gonzales'
e-mail address.
On June 3, 2001, Mrs Gonzales was hospitalised
with bleeding to the gut, a fever and in "absolute agony" with
stomach pain, Mr Tedeschi said.
Doctors diagnosed it as severe food poisoning but were unable to
isolate any bacteria or virus as the cause.
Mr Tedeschi said the crown alleged
Gonzales had poisoned his mother.
