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Missing Boy: Giovanni Gonzalez - MA - 08/15/2008


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#76 Jenn

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Posted 20 January 2011 - 10:08 AM

http://www.myfoxbost...leased-20110119

Age-progressed photo of Giovanni Gonzalez released


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Updated: Wednesday, 19 Jan 2011, 10:21 PM ESTPublished : Wednesday, 19 Jan 2011, 12:45 PM EST

LYNN (FOX 25 / MyFoxBoston.com) - A new age-progressed photo of a boy missing from Lynn since 2008 has been released.

These images have been provided by The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, showing a computer art depiction how Giovanni Gonzalez may look like now.

Giovanni Gonzalez was five years old when he disappeared after a visit with his father, Ernesto Gonzalez. Ernesto claimed he killed his son, but his body has not been found. Detectives investigating the disappearance of Giovanni found the boy's blood throughout his father's Lynn apartment.

His father, Ernesto Gonzalez, told the Boston Globe in late 2008 that he stabbed and dismembered the boy. He remains in jail.

Ernesto Gonzalez is being charged with parental kidnapping and misleading police in the disappearance of his son.

Giovanni, who would now be seven years old, was last seen on August 15, 2008, around 4 p.m.

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children says he may still be in the area or he may be in Puerto Rico.

Giovanni's mother, Daisy Colon, has maintained that she believes Giovanni is still alive.


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#77 Jenn

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Posted 04 February 2011 - 06:27 AM

http://news.bostonhe...sal_of_charges/

Missing Lynn boy’s father seeks dismissal of charges


By Associated Press Thursday, February 3, 2011 - Added 1 day ago

SALEM -- The lawyer for a Lynn man charged in connection with the disappearance of his 5-year-old son says he will ask a judge to dismiss charges.

Christopher Skinner, a lawyer for Ernesto Gonzalez, said in court on Wednesday that he intends to file a motion to dismiss on the grounds that the grand jury lacked sufficient evidence to indict his client.

Gonzalez has pleaded not guilty to charges of parental kidnapping and misleading investigators. He is being held without bail.

Prosecutors say they have been provided with a copy of the motion and will file a response.

Gonzalez was the last person to see his son, Giovanni, in August 2008 during a weekend visitation. He told a newspaper reporter that he killed the boy but no body has ever been found.


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#78 Jenn

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Posted 08 February 2011 - 05:54 AM

http://www.boston.co...n_by_hope_fear/

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

By Maria Sacchetti  Globe Staff / February 8, 2011

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.

As she spoke, she clasped her hands in her lap, wept, and expressed her devotion to her church.

“I would tell Ernesto to confess, no matter the circumstances, if he did it, or not, so that it takes the weight off him,’’ said Gonzalez, 60. “If my son is guilty, then he should pay. If he’s innocent, then he should speak.’’

Other associates of Ernesto’s in Puerto Rico said they were shaken by Giovanni’s disappearance — and tired of speculation that the boy might be hidden on the island.

One of Ernesto Gonzalez’s former girlfriends, with whom he fathered an older son, now 18, said she was stunned when investigators showed up at her door in Arroyo after Giovanni disappeared. The woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Gonzalez had sent her thousands of dollars in child support months before Giovanni disappeared. But she said she had never seen Giovanni, and she welcomed a reporter, who arrived unannounced, into her home.

Her son, a college student, said he was so upset about Giovanni’s disappearance that he could hardly get out of bed to face his classmates at school. He has since sought solace in counseling and his church.

Gonzalez’s older sister, Lydia Santiago Gonzalez, who also lives in Arroyo, said people stared at her in the supermarket when her brother’s picture appeared in the newspaper. She said she has not seen the boy, either.

“If I had him, I would be the first to hand him over,’’ she said.

In August, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in Virginia issued a photograph of Giovanni altered to depict what he might look like today, at age 7. The poster said he could still be in Massachusetts, or that he may have traveled to Puerto Rico.

Relatives in Puerto Rico said they do not believe that Gonzalez was capable of murder. They said he had a troubled childhood, fell into drugs in Puerto Rico, and had turbulent relationships with women in Puerto Rico and in Massachusetts. He had four children with different women, they said.

He had a criminal record in Massachusetts. In 2001, he was convicted of assault and battery and other charges in a domestic violence incident.

But they said he was also kind, protective of his family, and tender toward his children.

In Arroyo, the former girl-friend said she sent her son to visit Gonzalez in Massachusetts six years ago and that the boy returned beaming about a trip to Six Flags amusement park.

His sister, Lydia, who moved to Puerto Rico at age 18, lived apart from her brother for many years. But she said he stayed in touch through letters and appeared hopeful in the years before Giovanni disappeared.

In one letter, sent in 2006, he wrote that he hadn’t used drugs for 10 years and hoped to study. Sometimes he would slip prayer cards into the envelopes.

“I’m trying to improve my life,’’ he wrote.

Almost always, he asked about their mother.

“Everything’s Mom, Mom, Mom, always about Mom,’’ said his sister, who also said she rarely sees her mother, even though she lives nearby. “And Mom doesn’t go. I sometimes think if my mom goes, maybe he will say something.’’

His mother said she would visit her son one day, “when I am ready.’’ She said her son is “not a saint,’’ but she does not believe that he killed Giovanni.

“I have the sense this case is going to be cleared,’’ she said. “I want my son to talk.’’



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#79 Jenn

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Posted 10 February 2011 - 07:12 AM

http://www.myfoxbost...ks-out-20110209

Latest on Gonzalez case: Grandmother of missing Lynn boy speaks out

FOX 25 Morning News Updated: Wednesday, 09 Feb 2011, 10:46 AM EST Published : Wednesday, 09 Feb 2011, 10:46 AM EST

(FOX 25 / MyFoxBoston.com) - The grandmother of a missing Lynn boy says she wants her son to tell the truth about the fate of his child.

Ernesto Gonzalez Jr. said he killed his son, Giovanni. He has been charged in connection with the disappearance of his 5-year-old son.

Gonzalez has pleaded not guilty to charges of parental kidnapping and misleading investigators. He is being held without bail.

Gonzalez was the last person to see Giovanni in August 2008 during a weekend visitation. He told a newspaper reporter that he killed the boy, but no body has ever been found.

Boston Globe reporter Maria Sacchetti went to Puerto Rico and talked to Lydia Gonzalez. Watch VB's interview for more.


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#80 Lori Davis

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Posted 19 November 2011 - 05:41 PM

http://www.lynnpolic...ni_gonzalez.htm
Lynn Police Department profile for Giovanni Gonzalez

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#81 Lori Davis

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Posted 26 April 2015 - 07:07 AM

http://www.bostonglo...9d5H/story.html

 

Judge dismisses kidnapping charges against Lynn man

 

By Maria Sacchetti and John R. Ellement GLOBE STAFF  DECEMBER 05, 2013

 

An Essex Superior Court judge dismissed charges Thursday against a Lynn man who is the last person known to have been with his son before the child disappeared from the North Shore city five years ago.

 

No trace of Giovanni Gonzalez, then 5, has been found since he went for a weekend visit with his father, Ernesto Gonzalez, in August 2008.

 

The dismissal infuriated the missing boy’s mother, Daisy Colon, and led her to warn that other parents will now be able to escape full responsibility for kidnapping their own children by claiming to be mentally ill.

 

“He’s the only person who knows where my son is,’’ Colon said in a telephone interview Thursday. “But they can’t make him talk. Where is my son?”

She added: “Every single time we go to court, it’s all about his rights. But what about my son’s rights?’’

 

In a Salem courthouse Thursday, Superior Court Judge John T. Lu threw out charges of parental kidnapping and lying to investigators that were first filed against Gonzalez by Essex District Attorney Jonathan W. Blodgett’s office in 2008.

 

Lawyers for Gonzalez, 41, argued in court papers that state law calls for the dismissal of criminal charges when defendants are incompetent to stand trial and have served more than half of their potential prison sentences.

 

Gonzalez was declared mentally incompetent to stand trial in October.

 

In a three-page ruling, Lu said Gonzalez has already spent five years in custody, shuttling between jail and a state mental health hospital. The judge said that, as recently as two days ago, staff members at Bridgewater State Hospital where Gonzalez is being treated, reported he is “experiencing psychosis and delusions.’’

 

“The motion to dismiss must be allowed,’’ Lu wrote. “. . . This court has examined very recent mental health records. They all support a finding of not competent. . . . The records state that Mr. Gonzalez continues to endorse command auditory hallucinations to kill himself and others.’’

 

In a prior court hearing, Assistant Essex District Attorney Jean Curran had urged the judge to keep the case open, in case Gonzalez is found competent to stand trial next year. A spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office said Thursday that prosecutors are reviewing the judge’s dismissal and have 30 days to decide whether to appeal it.

 

Gonzalez’s lawyers have said he is unlikely to get out of jail soon. He has been civilly committed to Bridgewater State Hospital through May, and the hospital has asked that to be extended.

 

He is also facing additional criminal allegations from his time in jail, including an attack on a fellow inmate and assaulting a prison guard.

 

In a statement, Blodgett said that his office will continue its search for Giovanni Gonzalez.

 

“While the charges related to Giovanni’s disappearance have been dismissed, our efforts to locate him will continue,” Blodgett said. “We have and will follow up on any and all leads presented to us.”

 

According to Lynn police, a person tipped detectives on Monday that they had seen a child they believed to have been Giovanni Gonzalez riding a bike in Brockton. Detectives investigated, and concluded the child in Brockton is not the missing boy, a spokesman said.

 

Colon said she remains convinced that her son will some day be returned to her.

 

“I have not lost faith on that at all,’’ Colon said. “I know my son is somewhere. I know my son is going to show up one day with the help of the justice system or without their help.’’


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#82 Deborah

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Posted 09 November 2015 - 04:25 AM

Giovanni is still missing.

 

http://www.missingki...&orgPrefix=NCMC


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