Missing boy's mom hopes he's still alive, not murdered by dad (Lynn, Massachusetts)

A very sad tale of a mom who wanted to trust her ex-boyfriend ERNESTO GONZALEZ and include him as a father in her son's life--despite the fact that the father had a criminal record. It appears that her trust was sadly mistaken--since the father has confessed to murdering the boy. But since no body has shown up, Mom keeps hoping the boy is alive somewhere. This is why it is not a good idea to think that including just any father in your child's life is a good idea.

http://www.itemlive.com/articles/2009/08/02/news/news01.txt

Monday, August 3, 2009

Missing boy's mother speaks out as one-year anniversary of disappearance approaches
By Thor Jourgensen / The Daily Item

LYNN - Knowing she could hear the worst news ever about her child, Daisy Colon is resolutely hoping for the best in her determination to find her son, Giovanni, alive.

Despite a murder confession by the boy's father, Colon remains convinced that Ernesto Gonzalez and an accomplice kidnapped the boy so that Gonzalez could have sole custody of his 6-year-old son.

Police have not commented on that theory and Gonzalez, 37, has spent nearly a year in the Essex County House of Correction charged with kidnapping and lying to police.

"He confessed he killed him but it's a trick. They've looked around, through the trash and haven't found anything. He threw a a false thing out there. A lot of people believed it but he's a liar. He is just trying to hurt me more," Colon said during a July 30 interview.

Gonzalez did not answer her phone calls or his door bell when Colon went to his downtown Lynn apartment building on Sunday, Aug. 17, 2008 to pick her son up after a weekend visit with Gonzalez.

Hoping father and son were on their way home from a trip to the mall or park, Colon waited until 8 p.m. to call police who had to summon firefighters to enter Gonzalez' apartment through a window. Officers found him standing in the dark in his underwear. Giovanni was not there.

Police charged Gonzalez with child endangerment when he refused to reveal the boy's whereabouts. Searches across the city failed to locate the boy but Colon insists she saw her son with a man walking up a path from Essex Street to the top of High Rock Tower on a Sunday a month and a half after she dropped him off at Gonzalez' building.

"All I could see was his back. What caught my attention was he was helping Giovanni up the hill."

Colon pulled her car to the curb and without grabbing her purse or rolling up her windows, ran after the pair. She did not find the pair but she called police who, she said, scoured High Rock Park and the surrounding neighborhoods before locating a man and boy in Keaney Park. The man said he and the boy had been in High Rock Park earlier but Colon insisted the man's khaki clothing did not match the description of the man she saw walking the boy.

"You're telling me I'm confusing a man with a white Polo shirt and jeans?" she asked.

Giovanni Gonzalez' disappearance while in his father's care came after a month of seemingly successful reconciliation with Ernesto Gonzalez.

Colon and Gonzalez lived together for two years with their infant son before separating in 2005.

Colon said Gonzalez' violent outbursts and controlling personality reached a boiling point on July 4 of that year.

"He grabbed a chair, swung it. Thank God it hit something else," she said.

After years apart, Colon received a Suffolk Probate court correspondence in June 2008 outlining Gonzalez' interest in seeing his son.

"I told him, 'Prove to me you are not going to show up in his life then disappear.'"

Gonzalez, a meat packing plant worker with a criminal record dating back to his youth, started taking steps to meet her demands.

By July, he established a pattern of calling Colon and Giovanni on a regular basis and keeping his word when he made commitments to the pair. That behavior set the stage for Colon to approve overnight visits to Gonzalez' Lynn apartment on Aug. 1 and Aug. 7. The visits went well: Father and son took trips to a mall and a park and watched movies together.

But Giovanni's second visit left Colon concerned. The boy came back to her East Boston apartment "pretending to be someone else" and told her about plans to visit his brother in Puerto Rico. When the boy mentioned the possibility of his father and mother reuniting, Colon called Gonzalez and sought assurances that he was not giving Giovanni false hopes.

Looking back, Colon thinks Gonzalez was setting the stage for Giovanni's abduction by preparing him to answer to a false name. As he packed for his Aug. 15 visit with his father, Colon saw Giovanni stuff considerably more clothes than he needed for a weekend visit into his suitcase.

"He said, 'I've got to pack a lot of clothes.' I took half of them out.'"

That Friday was the last day Colon spoke with her son. Gonzalez' neighbors told police they saw father and son playing ball that Saturday and heard Gonzalez swear at the boy when the ball went astray. Three months later, one day before Thanksgiving, Gonzalez in a published confession said he stabbed the boy in a fit of rage on Aug. 17, dismembered his body in the apartment bathtub and threw the body parts wrapped in trash bags in Dumpsters across Lynn.

Following an initial search after Giovanni's disappearance, police searched the 2 Brightwood Terrace apartment after the confession and again this month. Their findings remain sealed by order of a judge.

For her part, Colon continues to solicit any help she can get in finding her son. She combined $1,600 in money she raised with $400 of her own money to post a reward. With Lynn Police Det. Capt. Mark O'Toole's help, she contacted a California foundation that added $5,000 to the reward. That commitment is only good through November but she is not giving up her search for Giovanni.

"My hope is there. I have faith. I go to church more. My (two and a half year old) daughter helps me and my mother is my No. 1 supporter. I just want them to find him. I know he's alive."