GIOVANNI GONZALEZ - 5 yo (2008) - Lynn MA

A new push from police to try and solve a two-year-old missing child case. The National Missing and Exploited Children website has a photo of what Giovanni Gonzalez might look like today. Gonzalez vanished more than two years ago from Lynn. He would be seven years old now. He
was last seen in August 2008 when his mother dropped him off at his
father's apartment. Police have been looking for the boy ever since. His
father continues to be held in connection with Giovanni’s
disappearance. Investigators said the little boy could still be in the
area, but may have been taken to Puerto Rico.

SALEM — A lawyer for a Lynn father who was the
last person seen with his missing son more than two years ago will ask a
judge to dismiss the charges against Ernesto Gonzalez.

During a hearing yesterday in Salem Superior Court,
Gonzalez's public defender, Christopher Skinner, told Judge Timothy
Feeley that he intends to file a motion to dismiss the case, on the
grounds that the grand jury lacked sufficient evidence to indict
Gonzalez on charges of parental kidnapping and misleading investigators.

That motion, which has not yet been filed, is scheduled to be argued on March 30.

Prosecutor Jean Curran said she intends to file a formal response in opposition to the motion.

Giovanni Gonzalez was 5 when he was last seen on Aug. 15, 2008, in Lynn, during a weekend visitation with his father.

Ernesto Gonzalez purportedly confessed to a Boston
newspaper reporter that he killed the boy, but investigators have
expressed skepticism about that claim.

The boy's mother, Daisy Colon, continues to hold out hope that the boy, who would now be 7, is alive.

Colon has attended every proceeding in the case during the more than two years it has been pending.

During a previous court proceeding, the prosecutor and
defense lawyer had raised the possibility of meeting with the judge in
an effort to resolve the case, but ultimately did not do so.
http://www.salemnews.com/local/x2072619732/Missing-childs-dad-Dismiss-charges

Grandmother of missing boy torn by hope, fear
Says she wants son to tell truth about fate of Lynn youth


Ernesto Gonzalez Jr. said he killed his son Giovanni.
(Massachusetts State Police)

PATILLAS, Puerto Rico — She emerges in a flowered housecoat from her fenced-in
house, in a remote corner of this Caribbean island where roosters and
horses run wild. For two years, relatives have begged her to return to
Massachusetts to visit her son in jail, to persuade him to solve the
mystery of the missing grandson she never knew.
But Lydia Gonzalez will not budge.
“He’s a grown man,’’ she said in Spanish, in her first interview since her
son, Ernesto, was accused in the August 2008 disappearance of his then
5-year-old son, Giovanni.
“He doesn’t need his mother to tell the truth.’’
Gonzalez, a petite, gray-haired former factory worker who raised Ernesto and his
sister in Massachusetts, is a powerful and distant figure in her son’s
troubled life. She has not spoken to him for years, despite his repeated
attempts to contact her, but some believe that she is crucial to
solving a case that is mired in uncertainty.
Three months after the boy vanished, Ernesto Gonzalez confessed in a
jailhouse interview with the Globe that he became upset while his son
was misbehaving during a weekend visit to his apartment in Lynn, and
stabbed the boy to death. He said he then dismembered his small body and
dumped the remains in trash bins. Investigators have since found the
boy’s blood in Gonzalez’s apartment, but the significance of that
evidence is unclear. The boy’s body has not been found.
Gonzalez, a 38-year-old former meatpacker, is charged only with parental
kidnapping and misleading investigators. He has pleaded not guilty, and
is being held in Essex County jail. Last week, his lawyer said in Essex
Superior Court in Salem that he would seek to have one of the charges
against Gonzalez dismissed at a hearing on March 30.
His lawyer, Christopher Skinner, and prosecutor Jean Curran declined to comment.
Giovanni’s mother, Daisy Colon, who separated from Gonzalez two years after
Giovanni was born and lives in Boston, said she believes that her son is
still alive, and possibly in Puerto Rico, where she and Gonzalez were
born and have relatives. She fears that his confession halted the search too soon.
After her son disappeared, she journeyed to the seaside towns of Patillas and Arroyo,
in southeastern Puerto Rico, to beg his relatives to help her, especially his mother.
“His mother has a very important role here,’’ Colon said last week. “Maybe
what he’s looking for is a way to talk to his mother. And maybe through
her he can unburden himself and talk. He is always asking for her. She is the key.’’
Sitting on her front porch late last month, Lydia Gonzalez said she nearly came to
Massachusetts, but changed her mind because she did not trust the
relatives who wanted to bring her. She said she loved Ernesto and was
estranged from him because he fell into drugs in Puerto Rico and fled to
Massachusetts under threat of a drug gang.

Continued...
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/02/08/from_afar_grandmother_of_missing_lynn_boy_torn_by_hope_fear/

SALEM - A Superior Court judge is considering a
motion to dismiss a parental kidnapping charge against the Lynn father
charged with the disappearance of his 5-year-old son in 2008.

Ernesto
L. Gonzalez, a 38-year-old former meatpacker, is charged with parental
kidnapping and willfully misleading police in the disappearance of his
5-year-old son, Giovanni Gonzalez, who was reported missing on Aug. 17,
2008 by his mother Daisy Colon.

She went to pick up Giovanni at
his father's house from a pre-arranged visit at 2 Brightwood Terrace in
Lynn and discovered he wasn't there.

Defense attorney Christopher S. Skinner is challenging the parental kidnapping charge in hopes of getting it dismissed.

Skinner
argued before Judge John T. Lu in Salem Superior Court that because
Gonzalez is the biological father of Giovanni and there was no court
order concerning the legal custody of his son, he cannot under state law
be convicted of the charge and therefore the grand jury heard
insufficient evidence to support probable cause to indict.

But
prosecutor Catherine Semel said because Giovanni was born out of
wedlock, legal custody goes solely to the mother and that Gonzalez was
never adjudicated to be the boy's father.

Gonzalez had rekindled his interest in Giovanni after not seeing him for almost a year.

When Colon went to pick up her son, Gonzalez failed to answer his phone or come to the door.

Colon
went to police, who eventually entered Gonzalez's apartment on
Brightwood Terrace through an open second-floor window where they found
Gonzalez inside a locked room.

Gonzalez denied to police that
Giovanni had ever been with him that weekend, but several witnesses
including a Lynn Community Health Center therapist and a receptionist
saw Gonzalez with his son at the facility, prosecutors said.



The boy was never located after police combed the city of Lynn.

Semel
said the grand jury presentation established that Gonzalez had
acknowledged his paternity of Giovanni in a Probate court proceeding and
was ordered to pay child support, but no judicial determination of
paternity was ever established.

"The question is did he have custodial rights?" Semel told Lu.

Lu took the matter under advisement and continued the case to June 1.

Gonzalez,
who remains held at the Middleton Jail without bail, has pleaded
innocent to both indictments. He faces up to five years in state prison
on the parental kidnapping charge and up to 10 years in state prison for
lying to law enforcement officers. There is no minimum mandatory
punishment on either of the two indictments lodged against him.


http://www.thedailyitemoflynn.com/articles/2011/03/31/news/news06.txt

Poster's Note: WTH is Giovanni?

BOSTON -- A judge has tossed out the parental kidnapping charge against a Lynn man whose son disappeared nearly three years ago.Ernesto
Gonzalez was charged in August 2008 with parental kidnapping and
misleading police after his son, Giovanni Gonzalez, disappeared after a
visit at Ernesto Gonzalez's Brightwood Terrace apartment.Superior
Court Judge John C. Lu judge tossed the parental kidnapping Monday,
according to the Lynn Daily Item. He is still facing the other charge.Police
said Gonzalez did not return Giovanni, who was 5 at the time, to the
child's mother, Daisy Colon, 22, of East Boston, at the end of a weekend
visit.Gonzalez's lawyer, Christopher Skinner, said he filed the
motion to dismiss the charge because there was insufficient evidence to
support it."I filed the motion because I thought it was appropriate," he said. "I am pleased with the result."The
misleading police charge was based on Gonzalez's initial insistence to
police that he had not seen his son the weekend the boy disappeared.The boy remains missing. Anyone with information about the case is asked to call the Lynn police at 781-477-4436.
Read more: http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/28220391/detail.html#ixzz1PC8hkaGX

November 11, 2011
A Lynn man being held on charges he misled investigators searching for
his missing 5-year-old son has been accused of assaulting his cellmate.
The Salem News reported that Ernesto Gonzalez was arraigned this week on
an assault-and-battery charge in an alleged attack on his cellmate late
last month. Gonzalez, 39, was the last person seen with his son,
Giovanni, in August 2008. Gonzalez told a reporter that he killed the
boy, but prosecutors have not found evidence to support that. Gonzalez
is being held without bail on charges of parental kidnapping and
misleading investigators. He has pleaded not guilty. (AP)
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2011/11/11/father-missing-boy-faces-new-charge/JmCVVpqvvha1C6FroFpeuN/story.html

That poor mother. It sounds like she tried to allow her POS husband have a relationship with the boy and then he either killed him or kidnapped him. Just a guess but it sounds like he made up the story about killing his son to throw them off course and actually abducted him and sent it to Puerto Rico like the mother thinks. I wish people could get along and not hurt one another. Everyone suffers. I think the POS father should be charged with murder and sentenced to life since he admitted he killed him. Why can't his confession be used as evidence?

Why can't his confession be used as evidence?

---Well, bj that's an interesting question. Legally, it would, at best, be circumstantial. We have seen this in many other cases where perps have waffled from murder to giving the child to another for care (see Elizabeth Johnson).

A confession without any indication of a crime is largely worthless.
Now, if there is a body found in a lake, and I confess to the killing
and can provide some information to give credence to my confession, then
I can be convicted.

The state’s highest court has reinstated a parental kidnapping charge
against Ernesto Gonzalez, the Lynn man whose 5-year-old son, Giovanni,
went missing in August 2008.



Ernesto and Giovanni Gonzalez (Massachusetts State Police photo)

Gonzalez was the last person seen with his son and was charged with
parental kidnapping and misleading investigators. He has not been
charged with his son’s disappearance, though he told Boston Globe
reporter Maria Sacchetti in an interview that he killed him.

A Salem Superior Court judge had tossed out the parental kidnapping
charge in June 2011. But the Supreme Judicial Court ruled today that the
charge could stand.

Daisy Colon, the boy’s mother, today welcomed the decision, saying that she still believes he is alive.

“I have not given up on that,” she said.

Essex District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett said in a statement that he
was pleased with the decision “so that we can proceed” with the case
against Gonzalez.

To be charged with parental kidnapping, a parent has to take a child
from his or her custodian “without lawful authority,” the court said.
Prosecutors had argued that Gonzalez, who was not married to the
child’s mother but was the child’s father, did not have custody of the
child and thus took the child without lawful authority. The prosecutors
cited a state law that says custody of children born to unmarried
parents belongs to the mother, even after paternity has been determined
or acknowledged, until a court rules on custody.

Gonzalez sought to challenge the constitutionality of that law.

The high court, in a 15-page opinion written by Justice Barbara Lenk,
said it didn’t have to reach the constitutional question because
another part of the law also provides that if “either parent
relinquishes or abandons the child and the other parent is fit to have
custody, that parent shall be entitled to custody.”

The court said Gonzalez had been absent for three years from his
son’s life, including a one-year complete disappearance. He had sought
permission from the mother to have weekend visits with his son. His son
disappeared on the third visit with him, in mid-August 2008.

“When the defendant did try to reenter [his son’s] life, he first
sought out [the mother’s] permission, in apparent recognition of her
role” as custodial parent, the court noted.

The court also said that if Gonzalez wanted to challenge the
constitutionality of the law giving custody to the mother he should take
another legal route, seeking physical custody in Probate and Family
Court and challenging there the default rule in favor of the mother.

“To hold otherwise would allow unmarried noncustodial fathers simply
to take their children, without judicial process, and to the exclusion
of custodial mothers, and air their grievances ... in the subsequent
criminal prosecution for parental kidnapping,” the court said.

“Allowing unmarried, noncustodial fathers to take a child first and
raise ... challenges to the constitutionality of the custody statutes
later would place the child’s safety at risk, and thus contravene the
child’s best interests,” the court said.

Giovanni Gonzalez went missing on Sunday, Aug. 17, 2008. The mother
said she had dropped him off at Ernesto Gonzalez’s home Friday
afternoon. When the mother arrived Sunday afternoon to pick the child
up, no one came to the door or answered the telephone, the court said in
a summary of the facts of the case. The mother tried to contact the
father for four hours. Eventually, firefighters were able to enter the
apartment. They found the father locked inside another room of the
apartment. The little boy has never been found.

Colon, the boy’s mother, said the lower court judge’s decision to
dismiss the charge had been a “slap in my face” and she had urged the
district attorney’s office to appeal it.

Over the past four years, she has papered neighborhoods with posters,
posted reminders on Facebook, and checked out leads on her own, she
said.

Colon said she was disappointed that supermarkets, coffee shops, and
other public locations have taken down posters of him, including a
sketch that shows what he might look like today, at age 9.

She said she draws strength from her family and her faith and
especially her daughter, who is now 5, the age Giovanni was when he
disappeared. Sometimes the girl pretends she is talking on the phone to
her brother.

Colon said she is not giving up in her search to find her son alive.

“I know that, sooner or later, in God’s hands, it’s going to happen,” Colon said. “We’re going to find out the truth.”

Attorney Russell Sobelman, who represents Gonzalez, didn’t immediately return a message seeking comment this afternoon.
http://www.boston.com/metrodesk/2012/06/13/state-highest-court-reinstates-parental-kidnapping-charge-against-father-missing-lynn-boy/IciGPj7TgNIfrsP3TnrzQJ/story.html

So this guy dissapeared from this son's life for a total of 3 years and at least 1 straight year. When my ex started acting weird, an for all intents and purposes abandoned our daughter and then tried to start his weekends back up after only 4 months I required supervised visitation at first because I was scared he would take her... that wasn't good enough for him so ultimately he legally signed his rights to my current husband. I can't imagine just throwing my kid into a relationship with anyone at that age. He probably barely remembered, if at all, his father.