The Gonzales Family Murder

Sef Gonzales began inquiring about his family wealth 3 days after his whole family was murdered.

[July 2001 | New South Wales, Australia]

On July 11, around 11:30 PM, the New South Wales emergency center received a panicked call from a teenage boy claiming his family had been shot. Sef had just returned from hanging out at a video game center with his friend, Sam Dacillo.

It was a gruesome scene. Downstairs, his parents lay lifelessly on the blood-stained floor with multiple stab wounds. Sef straddled the bodies of his parent, wailing for loss. A clear, despicable message sprayed across his family wall, “F*ck off Asians KKK.” Upstairs, his younger sister laid lifelessly with her head bashed.

Investigators initially assumed that the Gonzales family were victims of a hate crime. Sef went on TV, offering a reward of A$100,000 for the killer(s) to step up. Sef sang ‘One Sweet Day’ by Mariah Carey in his father’s eulogy. While the lyrics showed regret, missing him, and looking for a better tomorrow, an attendee found it odd as he calmly sang before his family’s mutilated bodies.

At this point, investigators knew that Sef’s account was suspicious. In his first statement, he claimed that he tried stopping the gushing blood from his sister’s neck. He barely had any blood on him, safe a few splatters and stains on his sole. It didn’t fit the timing of her death, as post-mortem investigation estimated her death to be three hours before Sef’s return. And, blood would not have ‘gushed out’ if the victim had passed as the heart would have stopped pumping.

The Gonzales Family

The Gonzales family is wealthy. In the Philippines, the head of the family, Teodor ‘Teddy’ Gonzales, was a lawyer and a successful businessman with a hotel of his own. In the 1990s, an earthquake wiped out the family’s hotel. With one of the biggest sources of income demolished, the family immigrated to Australia.

In Australia, Teddy requalified and continued his path as a lawyer and built a law firm specializing in immigration. Mary Loiva was just as hardworking and ambitious as her husband. She worked as an office manager of Teddy’s legal practice.

The couple had high expectations of their son and daughter to excel academically and raised them strictly without ‘distractions.’ When they discovered their teenage daughter, Clodine, had a boyfriend, they sent her over to a relative’s house in Melbourne to continue her high school education.

Clodine’s older brother, Sef, was not academically gifted. He was average at best. He, however, had a strong passion for music. He’s a singer for an acapella band (Definite Vibez) and had a fan page of himself, allegedly set up by a family friend, Daisy. Though later, investigators revealed it was Sef himself who set up the fan page, and most of the messages were fabricated.

Teddy and Mary preferred to have Sef pursue a ‘traditionally successful’ career path, either law or medicine. Sef did try to do so by enrolling in a medical science field at the University of New South Wales. Two years later, he dropped out. He then enrolled at Macquarie University and took up law subjects.

In his parents’ eye, Sef was finally performing. He had good grades, setting himself up for a good career path. But, in reality, Sef was close to being expelled as he often skipped and failed examinations. Sef was forging his university result documents and lying to his parents. When they found out, they warned Sef that they would be confiscating his favorite car if he did not perform next semester.

On top of that, Sef was smitten with his girlfriend with engagement promises. Sef’s parents disapproved of his relationship as they found the girlfriend too old for their son with a four years age gap. Sef confided in his uncle,

“Basically, my life went upside down. I feel I’m trapped and don’t know what to do; feel like I’m getting deeper and deeper as if I could not stop this momentum.”

The Murder

On July 10, Sef went over to his father’s practice in an attempt to fix a computer. Between 3 PM and 4 PM, he left. In about 30 minutes, he drove home where her sister Clodine, mostly in Melbourne, was home for the school holidays.

Around 4:30 PM, Sef crept up with a bat and two kitchen knives in his hands to Clodine’s room, where she was studying. He bashed Clodine’s head at least six times, and strangled and stabbed her multiple times. Clodine had at least five major stab wounds to her neck and another two to her chest/abdomen area.

When Mary returned home around 5:30 PM, Sef struck quickly. Sef stabbed and sliced her trachea. Mary did not even have the chance to take off her shoes and put down her handbag.

At 6:50 PM, Teddy returned home. Sef ambushed and stabbed him with the kitchen knife, puncturing his lung and penetrating his heart. He then got rid of the murder weapon(s) and clothes and cleaned himself up. He spraypainted the hateful message across the wall, setting up a motive for the murders.

After the murder

Around 8 PM, he drove over to Sam’s place, where the two hung out for hours at Planet Hollywood and a nearby video game center (Sam was not aware of the murders). After Sam dropped him off, he called triple 0, the equivalent to 911 in Australia.

Sef was quick to react to his family’s inheritance. Less than three days after their deaths, Sef contacted his father’s accountant to find out about his father’s retirement fund. He pawned away his mother’s jewelry.

In two months, Sef began enquiring about a luxury car brand, Lexus, that cost over A$170,000, where he told him he would be financing it through his inheritance which was worth over A$1.5 million. He had already deposited for a Porsche but did not get go through with the final purchase. He moved into a luxury high-rise apartment.

His alibis

While Sef was bragging shamelessly about his wealth, investigators zoned in on him. In his first alibi, he claimed he did not enter the house after arriving. Instead, he received a call from Sam to meet at 8 PM, and in the meantime, Sef decided to meet up with another friend Raf DeLeon, but after hours of failing to locate Raf’s house, he decided to head back and meet Sam.

However, that alibi was thrown out the window as Sef’s car was spotted by his father’s client, who was there to drop the documents at their family’s letterbox. Around 6 PM, Sef’s aunty, Emily Luna, too spotted Sef’s car. While her door knocks were ignored, she did notice Sef’s car still parked in the parking lot. She caught a glimpse of a shadow behind the frosted glass, but she shrugged it off as a coat stand. Phone records between Sam and Sef did not match up with Sef’s account.

Sef decided to construct another alibi. He parked his car and walked to a service station to catch a taxi that brought him to a brothel. After the sex with a prostitute, he caught another taxi back. He never entered the house. He claimed that he was so good that he did not have to pay for the time with the prostitute. Records later showed that the prostitute was not even working that day, nor did Sef take any taxi.

Not the first time

In early 2001, Sef already had the intention to harm his family. In February, June, and July, Sef researched poison and poisonous plants and emailed overseas and local suppliers on specifically two poisonous plants that are lethal.

When Sef realized that his order would be delayed as the supplier was on annual leave, he emailed them under the pretense that it was urgent as it was a birthday gift for his mother and she had been looking for them for a long time. The seed arrived on June 29.

Two days later, Mary was feeling sick to the point she had to be admitted to a hospital for another two days. The doctor in charge believed that it could cause colitis, an inflammation of the bowel possibly caused by food poisoning. Mary, too, agreed, believing it must be her dinner on June 30.

Justice

On June 13, 2002, police arrested Sef from his apartment. In two years, he was found guilty of the murder of his family and sentenced to three concurrent life terms without any possibility of parole.

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