Dad gets kidnap charge tossed; claimed he killed 5-year-old son, but body never found (Lynn, Massachusetts)

Wow. So dad ERNESTO GONZALEZ cannot be formally charged with kidnapping became a court never formally denied him custody. Even though the kid has been missing for nearly three years now. Based on Daddy's jailhouse confession, it is assumed the child was murdered during visitation. There was even blood evidence in Daddy's apartment. So why isn't Gonzalez being charged with murder? Daddy coddling at its finest.

We need laws that establish unmarried mothers as the automatic and sole legal guardians of their children. This is ridiculous.

We've posted on this case several times over the years.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/06/14/lynn_father_gets_kidnap_charge_dismissed/

Father gets kidnap charge tossed
Claimed he killed son but body never found
By Maria Sacchetti
Globe Staff / June 14, 2011

Prosecutors trying to build a case against a man suspected in the mysterious disappearance of his 5-year-old son three years ago were dealt a blow yesterday when a Superior Court judge dismissed a charge of parental kidnapping against him.

Salem Superior Court Judge John T. Lu said the Essex district attorney’s office had failed to prove parental kidnapping because a court had not formally denied Ernesto Gonzalez custody of his son, Giovanni.

“Here, Mr. Gonzalez is accused of parental kidnapping; this indictment requires demonstrating that he lacked lawful authority over his son,’’ Lu wrote in his decision. “There was no court order depriving him of lawful authority, but merely a statute whose reach had already been limited by the Supreme Judicial Court.’’

Gonzalez has spent most of the last three years in the Essex House of Correction in Middleton awaiting trial after Giovanni disappeared during a weekend visit to Gonzalez’s apartment in August 2008. Gonzalez confessed to killing his son in a jailhouse interview with The Boston Globe three months after Giovanni disappeared.

Investigators found the boy’s blood in Gonzalez’s apartment in Lynn, but a body was never found and authorities have not charged the father with the boy’s death.

Instead, they charged Gonzalez, who was estranged from the boy’s mother, with parental kidnapping and with lying to investigators about the boy’s disappearance. He has pleaded not guilty and could still face up to 10 years in state prison if convicted of misleading investigators. The parental kidnapping charge had carried a penalty of up to a year in county jail.

Lu said in yesterday’s ruling that because Gonzalez and the boy’s mother had no court-sanctioned custody arrangement, there was no legal basis for the kidnapping charge.

The boy’s mother, Daisy Colon, said she still holds out hope that the child is alive. Yesterday she said she is infuriated by the judge’s ruling and urged prosecutors to appeal it.

“Basically what he’s saying is it’s OK for a parent to take a child away from the mother or the father with no repercussion for that,’’ said Colon. “He knew he didn’t have custody of my son.’’

Christopher Skinner, Gonzalez’s public defender, said he was pleased with the judge’s ruling and that the case was nearing trial on the charge of misleading investigators.

“We’ve got to get ready. We’re getting close to the end of the case, however it’s going to be resolved. I think all the discovery is done. All of the motions are done. I suppose the Commonwealth could appeal this [the judge’s ruling]. We’ll see.’’

Prosecutors have 30 days to file an appeal. Essex District Attorney Jonathan W. Blodgett said through a spokesman that he is reviewing the decision and would make an announcement in 48 hours about the case.

Gonzalez had been in Giovanni’s life sporadically until he resumed visits in 2008. Other visits had been uneventful, so in mid-August 2008, Colon dropped off Giovanni at his father’s apartment again.

But when she went to pick him up, she became frantic when Gonzalez did not answer the door. She called police, and eventually fire officials entered Gonzalez’s second-floor apartment through a window. They found him there alone, with a still-unexplained cut on his hand.

At first, he told police he did not have the boy that weekend, but witnesses said they saw them together.

He was arrested and later told a Globe reporter in a jailhouse interview that he lost control when the boy misbehaved. He said he stabbed Giovanni to death with a red-handled knife, dismembered his body in the bathtub, and put the remains in trash dumpsters throughout Lynn.

After additional searches of his apartment, investigators discovered the boy’s blood throughout Gonzalez’s apartment, on a red-handled knife, on a piece of wood flooring, on the bathroom threshold, and on the cap to a bottle of pine-scented cleaner.

Giovanni, who would now be 8 years old, was days away from starting kindergarten when he vanished. Last year, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in Virginia issued a photograph of Giovanni altered to depict what he might look like as an older child, to aid in the investigation.