July 2, 2025 • 49 mins
At just 20 years old, Sef Gonzales murdered his entire family, his father Teodoro, mother Mary Loiva, and 18-year-old sister Clodine, in their Sydney home in 2001.
Struggling with an identity crisis, failing his medical exams, and facing rejection from his parents, who planned to disown him and cut off his inheritance, Sef devised a chilling plan. He brutally killed them and tried to stage the scene as a racially motivated hate crime. But the truth soon unravelled.
Nick Kaldas, then head of the New South Wales Homicide Squad, led the investigation that ultimately brought Sef Gonzales to justice. You can find his book, Behind the Badge, here.
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Guest: Nick Kaldas
Host: Claire Murphy
Senior Producer: Tahli Blackman
Audio Producer: Jacob Round
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
True Crime Conversations acknowledges the traditional owners of land and
waters that this podcast was recorded on. On a quiet
street in Sydney in two thousand and one, twenty year
old Sef Gonzales would return to his family home to
find his father, mother, and sister all dead, stabbed, beaten,
(00:27):
and strangled. In his panicked call to Tribouleau, he would
mistakenly believe that they'd all been shot. There was so
much blood at the scene he couldn't initially tell what
had really happened to his family. What actually occurred in
the Gonzalez family home that day would be followed by
a nearly year long investigation that would see accusations of
dodgy business deals, hit men, gangland, retaliation, bribery, revenge, and poison.
(00:53):
But while this sounds like the plot line for a
season of Underbelly, in reality, the truth about the Gonzales
family murders was much simpler, much more sinister, and much
closer to home. I'm Claire Murphy and this is True
(01:14):
Crime Conversations, a podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes
by speaking to the people who know the most about them.
When New South Wales police stepped into the investigation into
the murder of Teddy Gonzales, his wife, loev and daughter
Claudine in the Sydney suburb of North Ryde in July
two thousand and one. They would find the only surviving
family member, Sef, seemingly devastated over the brutal debts of
(01:38):
his father, mother, and sister. He'd been out with a
friend on the night his family died, captured on CCTV
footage out at dinner and then at an arcade playing
video games. He arrived home to the confrontational scene, telling
police that he'd try to revive them using CPR. He
said he also tended to the wounds on his sister's body,
But why was there only a tiny bit of blood
(02:01):
on his clothing. Sef also said that he wasn't home
that afternoon. Why was his distinct green Ford Fiesta in
the driveway, Who were the men Sef had seen running
from the house, and was the racist graffiti on a
wall inside the home the real reason his family was targeted.
With all these questions adding up, investigators had to unravel
(02:23):
the Gonzales family murders with a nearly twelve months investigation
using tactics that would normally be used in organized crime investigations.
So what did the undercover operatives and bug phones discover
and why would one statement from Seph make his auntie
finally realize what went down that day. Nick Caldas has
(02:45):
had a long career with the New South Wales Police.
Arriving from Egypt as a child, he would grow up
wanting to be a police officer. At age twenty one,
that became his reality, working as a hostage negotiator and
an undercover cop before becoming one of the most senior
officers here in Australia as the New South Wales Deputy Commissioner.
During his time on the force, he led some of
(03:06):
New South Wales's biggest criminal investigations, from the murder of
MP John Newman to the disappearance of Samountha Knight. He
would also oversee the investigation into the murder of the
Gonzales family. Could the baby face surviving member of the
Gonzales family really have killed his entire family? He sat
down with us to remember his time on the force
(03:27):
and explain how they finally caught the real killer of
Teddy Leeuver and clothing Gonzales. So you join the New
South Wales Police at the tender age of twenty four,
but you've grown up on the force during what would
be quite a tumultuous time for New South Wales Police.
There's been a fair bit of scandal which we've seen
(03:48):
play out on TV shows across Australia in recent years.
What was it like for you as a young officer
being surrounded by that.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
I wouldn't say I was surrounded by controversy or corruption,
and I think on by and large, I think probably
ninety something percent of police in New South Wales went
out their work and we're doing a good job. Was
a minority obviously that was up to no good and
that all came out later on, But I didn't think
it was visible to anyway. Men and people who are
doing bad things, corrupt things that discuss it. That It's
(04:18):
not something that comes out on a daily basis in
the meal room.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
So that I'm sitting in the lunch room going, hey,
how's about this bridebite just received?
Speaker 3 (04:24):
No no, no.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
I mean those who are up to no good would
talk to others who are up to no good. But yeah,
I my strong sense and belief is that it was
a very small minority, but they obviously tainted everybody else
with that stench.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Can you tell me how one ends up as a
hostage negotiator?
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Sure, you have to apply.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Obviously you have to have a certain number of years
and I can't remember, but you certainly have to have
experience as a police officer before they take you. In
the metropolitan area, they tend to go for detectives, because
detectives are not if you're in uniform, you have a
shift and you're on the truck, and if an incident
happens and you get taken off the truck, obviously you've
got a shortage and stuff. Then on that shift. But
(05:04):
detectives you can put whatever statements you're taking or interviews
you're doing or whatever, and go to a siege or
whatever incidents has occurred. So they tend to gravitate towards detectives.
In the country, they tend to do that. They're not
as fussy. You have to apply. You have to have
people who will give your references to say this person
is a good communicator, he connects with people well, and
(05:26):
so on. So you're a detective, you have the time
and then you have to go through a fairly strenuous
selection process. In particular, it includes a lot of psychological
testing to make sure that you're not someone who's going
to fly off the handle. And the motto is that
if you can't control yourself, how are you going to
control anyone else. So you go through a two week
course and you can fail, but if you pass, you
(05:48):
go on a team, and there's a team of fourth
the Negasiators, and it's pretty much your way across the
Western world, the Indians speaking world, at least, there's a
team of four usually, so there's a team leader, the
primary who primary negastiat who does all the talking, the
secondary who sticks with and backs up and takes notes
for the primary, and then the gopher as they call it,
which is the starting point. If you come on a team,
(06:08):
you usually start as a gopher. You get the coffee.
You go back and forth between the team leader and
so on, and then negotiat us and the eventually you
go from gopher to secondary to first and then if
you're lucky, you get the team leader.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
I was lucky.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
I got the team leader, but I had a lot
of years as a primary, which is good. The other
thing is you're not on call all the time because
that would obviously be draining. So there's usually five or
six and I think there's more now teams, and so
every fifth or sixth week, your team is on call
for that week and you have to be on standby.
In those days, we had pages. I don't know where
the young kids today know what pages are, but.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
This I think maybe drug dealers do, but not so many.
Just average people though.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
But your pager would go off to contact the duty
Operations inspector and you'd get writing instructions from wherever you
are about where you are, and then it's blue lights
and siren to get to a siege or whatever.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
It is that they need you to go to.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
We are going to focus in on the Gonzales murders shortly,
but other than that case, what are some of the
other high profile cases that you ended up working on
in New South Wales.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
Of course there's quite a few. So I had about
a dozen years and the homicide squad.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
In the last four or so I was actually the commander,
and I just clarify that I was not the officer
in charge of the Gonzales case. I was the quander
of the homicide squad and therefore was briefed and consulted
and we discussed the lines of investigation and so on.
The officer in charge who did a very good job
as a detective sergeant at that stage. He's now Chief
Superintendent Mick she who's legendary homicide detective.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
He's done a lot of really good work.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Some of the other cases, probably the most prominent one
that sticks out in my mind is the murder of
John Newman, the member of Parliament nineteen ninety four. I
started off as one of the team on it, but
then eventually a short time later I became the commander
of it and I stuck with it obviously after that,
and it was a seven year investigation between murder and conviction,
and it's been torturous, I have to say so. Essentially,
(08:01):
John Newman was killed by a political opponent who's now
been convicted and sentenced to life released, a fellow called
fum Can. We had a series of hearings at the
Crime Commission where we grilled people. Basically, he had approached
a number of criminal groups to do the murder who had.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Rejected the offer, so essentially like looking for hit man, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
And we managed to get those people who were approached
who had rejected and not done anything to roll as
they say and actually tell us what happened and then
give evidence of that. Later on, we tracked his movements
on the mobile phone. We probably one of the first
cases to investigate using mobile phone data ninety four. It
was revolutionary and we proved that he was at the
(08:42):
scene of the murder at the time of the murder,
and then later on he goes to Voyager Point footbridge
in George's River and he makes a number of course
from there an attempt to alibi himself after the murder,
and drops the gun into the river. We dredged the
river sometime later and found the gun and it was
matched ballistically. We had the hearings that the crime commissioned.
(09:02):
Then we had a kurenter's inquest because the DPP didn't
feel we had enoughter charge, and then we had a
committal hearing. Then we had three Supreme Court trials. One
was aboarded, one was a hung jury eleven to one,
and the third time he was convicted. The other guys
involved were acquitted. That was a hard fought one. It
was very much under the intense glare of media and
(09:23):
public attention.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
You would think after you leave the New South Wales
Police Force you would live a much quieter, sedate life.
But that seems that is not in your DNA because
you've done so many things. You've led investigations into chemical
weapons use in Syria, you did an independent review of
the christ Church shootings. How do you think these roles
after leaving the police force have shaped you? And that
(09:47):
whole perspective on global justice and accountability.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
That notes for others to judge.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
But I had a bit of a policy, if you
like that, if something came up and I thought it
was worthwhile, I found it difficult to say. No. I
probably was not ready and I'm probably not quite ready
yet to sit at home in my pajamas.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
I might get to that, but I'm not there. And
obviously the thing that took.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Up three years of my life was the Royal Commission
into Defense and Veteran Suicide, which was I think quite
a It was certainly a noble cause and I'm honored
that I was asked to serve in that role. But
a lot of the roles you've said, and I was
also the Director of Internal Overside in UN the United
Nations Relief Works Agency, which is the United Nations agency
that deals with all the Palestine refugee issues in five
(10:32):
countries eleven On, Syria, Jordan, Gaza, and the West Bank.
And I had offices and staff in each of the locations,
and we lived in Jordan for three years headquarters.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Well, I carried that out.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
If something comes up and I think I can do
some good in it, and I'm not going to stuff
it up, you know, like Mace Cops.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
I operate on the basis of buy it off more
than you can chew and.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Chew like hell m which then leads you to write
an entire book on top of all of that too.
Speaker 4 (11:00):
So you still have not sat still for a minute, have.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
You not quite mad?
Speaker 2 (11:05):
The book was a torture us brasis as well, where
I have to say, I've not done this before. I'm
certainly not an author. What I've There's a few things
that sort of convinced me to do it. One is
an encouragement from friends in particularly Gary Jubilin. He's written
a couple of books himself and we worked together in
homicide for many many years. But the other fellow who
(11:26):
sort of convinced me to do this is a fellow
called Bob Bear. It's Baer. He's an American fellow x CIA.
He was in the CIA and living on throughout the
Lebanese Civil War. He's certainly got some stories to tell.
So he read his book. It's called The Company We Keep.
In America, they tend to refer collocally to the CIA
as the Company. And it's a really good book, The
(11:48):
Company We Keep.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
He dedicated his book.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
To his kids, and he opens the book up by saying,
I hope this is this goes some way towards explaining
where the hell I was.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
And he said to me, you do it. You don't
do it for yourself.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Sometimes you do it for your family, your kids, grandkids,
great grandkids. I mean, we've been on a bit of
a journey out of Upper Egypt in the south to Cairo,
and then from Cairo to Sydney, and then for me,
I've gone to a lot of other places obviously, and
I felt it would be good to have a record
of that for the family and for the kids, and
for my community, the Egyptian community, the Coptic community, the
(12:21):
Arabic community, the migrant community in Australia. I hope I've
done my best to be a somewhat positive role model.
And I used to try and attend all the recruitment days,
particularly in Southwest Sydney, where we talked to the communities.
Not that I was sort of exhibit A, but they
would say, look here is someone who is just a
kid from Marrickville and.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
This migrant boy he's achieved.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Yeah, if I can do it, I'm very ordinary. So
if I can do it, I think anyone can. And
that was my message, you know you can do this.
There shouldn't be no glass ceilings. I'm happy to have
breaken through a couple of glass ceilings. And I'm not
a lawyer, and I'm certainly not a judge, and I'm
maybe the first one to head up a federal royal
commission without being a lawyer. My two co commissioners one
(13:06):
was a Supreme Court judge, former Supreme Court Judge James Douglass,
and the other one was a psychiatrist and pharmacy of
National Mental Health Commission. So I think the three of
us brought really good perspectives to that problem and it
worked quite well.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
You're listening to true crime conversations with me, Claire Murphy.
I'm speaking with former Deputy Commissioner of the New South
Wales Police Force, Nick called us up. Next, Nick tells
us about the Gonzales family murders and how Seph Gonzales
reported his family's death to police. Let's talk about the
Gonzales murders and look at the Gonzales family themselves. What
(13:45):
do we know about their lives and who they were
before they immigrated to Australia from the Philippines.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
They're a religious family.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
They were Catholic, quite quite law abiding and hard working
mum and dad and the daughter obviously, and the son
and somewhere along the line. And I'm not a psychologist,
but the son obviously sEH lost his way emotionally or
ethically morally. To kill your own family because you want
(14:14):
the inheritance, it's pretty bad. But he was failing, and
there were very high expectations. I think, as mass migrant
firmary's experience, his dad had very high expectations expecting him
to go to UNI and to study and to do
all these things which he simply wasn't up to doing.
And he couldn't in my view, he couldn't admit that.
So the answer was he wanted the lifestyle and the
(14:35):
car and the house and the money and whatever, and
this thing stood in his way, with his father insisting
that he actually do well at studying and graduating and
so on, so he took the ultimate step of killing them.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Well, let's talk about that family dynamic for a moment,
because they did immigrate after a major earthquake in the
Philippines destroyed dad's business, and apparently Seth was pulled from
the rubble by his dad, Teddy, So he saved his
life back then, which is ironic seeing as he would
take his life later.
Speaker 4 (15:06):
But you're right.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Seth started a medical degree, failed it, then shifted to law,
and from what his parents thought at the time, he
was actually doing remarkably well. He joined the family firm
as a paralegal and it specialist. So for a while
there looked like things were going really well. But then
it seems that wills were starting to fall off because
(15:30):
Seph wanted to be a musician. He was in a
boy band that played at some nightclubs, etc. He'd gotten
a girlfriend, and I'm guessing that family dynamic, as you mentioned,
which does run through quite a lot of migrant families,
is a real high expectation that you will be academic
and that you will deliver a really satisfying career result
as a result of that academic.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
Was that what we think? I mean?
Speaker 1 (15:55):
He said he did this for the inheritance, But was
that the beginning of where the will started to fall off?
That pressure on him to become something that he didn't
want to be.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
And he was failing.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
He was actually in you and he was never going
to be able to live up to I don't think
he was ever going to finish and graduate and whatever.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
He simply wasn't up to it.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
How did he then make his parents think he was
being successful.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Well, he didn't tell him where he was and what
he was doing. Basically, there's an old story. Actually it's
probably illustrates the point you're making among migrant communities. A
fellow called Rami Mallick, who's an actor who played Freddie
Mercury in the movie About Queen His Egyptian like me,
and he won the Best Actor Oscar Award. So he
(16:35):
rang his mom allegedly and said to her mom, I've
won the Best Actor Oscar Award. And she said to him,
that's nice, son, but you're not a doctor. So that's
the expectation that if you're not a doctor. I'm a
bit of a failure in many ways. But I think
reality sort of was surrounding him and haunting him, and
(16:59):
he got to a point where he simply would have
had to admit to his father and family at some
stays and I'm failing. I'm not going to do what
you think I'm up to. And he didn't know how
they take that. They probably desame him and whatever, and
so his answer was to not confront the problem and
talk to them about it is to kill him. Now,
how he went from that to killing his parents and
(17:22):
sister and so on, I really don't know. I can't
comprehend that mentality of going to that really extreme, horrible
evil conclusion, but he certainly did that.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Well, let's talk about the crime itself. It's the tenth
of July two thousand and one. So Teddy, his dad,
Loiver mum have gone off to work in separate cars.
His sister Claudine is home from school for school holidays.
She's been shifted down to Melbourne because in this strict
parenting style that they have, she got a boyfriend in Sydney,
(17:56):
so they shifted her away to live somewhere else in
order for her to focus on her studies. Right, So
she's back, she's a couple of days away from returning
to Melbourne, so she's getting some study and she stayed
at home. What do we know of Seth's movements or
what Seth said his movements were that day.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
There were a lot of inconsistencies in what he said,
which were proven in the evidence and produced in court,
and it was one of the things that brought him
undone is that he lied. He tried to change his
version a number of times, and it's just got worse
and worse for him. He could not account for his
whereabouts at the time of the murder, and there were
neighbors who had seen the car and the driveway and
so on. I can't recall exact details, but I do
(18:34):
recall that it was a critical factor in the case
against him.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Lying is never good.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
For someone who's accused of murder. Being caught out is
obviously very bad. And then when you put your foot
in it further and create concoct more lies that you
caught out about. And there were records of his movements
through entry into buildings and other things that were produced
as well. It was a very thorough methodical sort of
gathering and timeline that was put together by Mikshi and Esteem,
(19:00):
and ultimately the jury was convinced that is they were right.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Soliver's sister is supporting her nephew through this. She thinks
that he's devastated by the murder of his family members.
So she's sitting with him while he's being interviewed by police,
and he said that he had popped home, but he'd
sat in the car in the driveway because it was
raining at around six pm, And she recalls like snatching
(19:25):
her hand away from him because in that moment, she
realizes that he's lying because she had gone to the
house at six pm and she knew full well it
wasn't raining, and she had seen his car in the
driveway and knew that he wasn't in it. But police
realized that she realizes that he's lying, and then they
recruit her to try and get his confession. Yep, that's
(19:48):
really clever. Did that work though?
Speaker 2 (19:50):
After some extent that did He told her things that
he probably didn't mean to and particularly didn't want the
police to sort of hear. But it sat human dynamic
where you see and the Lynka family murders was the
other case where a lot of people stuck with the offenda,
thinking the guy, he's lost his loved ones. You know,
we've got to try and support him and what have you.
(20:10):
You might recall that famous moment was Sep Gonzales sang
a hymn at the funeral for his parents, and.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
There washing some of the Mariah Carey song, didn't he
it was one fine day or something, if I remember.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Rightly, There wasn't a dry eye in the house. It
was this terrible story about this kid who'd lost his
family and we must all feel sorry for him, which
makes it even more evil. I have to say, I
mean to do something as horrible as that and then
soak up the adulation and sympathies in itself pretty bad.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
What was interesting, too, is police said that they kind
of knew from the Triple O call onwards that something
wasn't right with Seph, because while he seemed to be
very distraught and he seemed to be sobbing when they
arrived at the scene, he wasn't actually crying and he
gave very clear answers to directives and questions. Is that
(21:05):
a bit of a give way when someone is a
little bit too on the ball.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
Yeah, and my memory is that there were no tears.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
But yeah, I think call it the gut feeling, and
certainly most homicide investigators would have this. Within the first
few hours. You tend to get a bit of a
gut feeling. And my belief is that it's usually right.
Sometimes it's wrong. It's not one hundred percent, but I
know in the Newman murder, literally within a few hours
we were thinking the murderer was our man. In that one,
(21:34):
we had ninety seven lines of inquiry and we had
to eliminate all of them before we could charge anyone,
which we did. But you eventually land on the one,
and certainly in the Seth Gonzales murder, they very quickly
landed on belief that he one was not being truthful.
The body language is really important, nonverbal communications, inconsistencies in
the stories, lies that were able to be proved as lies,
(21:58):
deliberate lies that couldn't possibly be a mistake, and quite
a large number of those, and then if you add
all that up together, it becomes a very compelling circum
stential case.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
They did have to rule out some other lines of
inquiry though, because there is the potential racial hate crime
because of the graffiti. There's also a lot of conversation
about Teddy's business. He worked as a lawyer helping Filipino
immigrants come into Australia and do their documentation, and he
had been charged with falsifying some documents. He was later
cleared of that, but there was this phone call that
(22:29):
a colleague overheard that he was arguing with somebody back
in the Philippines over some property and that there was
a threat to kill his family. So there was a
lot of other lines of inquiry that were followed. Seph
wasn't the only.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
One right now, And to be fair and any murder investigation,
you absolutely have to follow all those other lines of
inquiries to the nth degree and rule them out because
if you don't, they will be brought up in court
and the defense will say you haven't done your job.
There are other possibilities, our client is innocent, etc. So
it's really crucial in any murder investigation to actually listen
(23:03):
to and follow up on any other possibility really other
than the person you ultimately charge, to make sure that
there is nothing there.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
And certainly that was the case in the Seth Gonzales case.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Can we talk about the injuries to the victims, because
it's interesting when you look at the three different victims.
So Claudine, his younger sister, was the first to be killed.
What do we know about her death?
Speaker 3 (23:31):
I think it was quite horrible, obviously.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
I mean this might be distressing for some of the listeners,
but I wasn't at the scene, but I'm told there
are metal grids that police use in a crime scene
that are off the ground, lifted off the ground about
four or five inches, and there was so much blood
both with Claudine's murder and the parents' murder, that they
had to put a number of those to step on
(23:54):
so that an't disturbed the scene until it's photographed and captured. Fully,
there's a huge amount of blood everywhere. Really, and sorry
they digress lightly. One of the things I and the
senior police really have to worry about in these sorts
of cases is the mental health and well being of
the homicide investigator seeing the worst of humanity in that
(24:16):
sort of situation, which I think we do reasonably well.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
Now.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
I'm not going to say it was perfect always, but
it certainly is now.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
But one of the things that I was briefed on.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Is the sheer quantity of blood that had been spilled
Beth in Claudine's murder and their parents' murder, there's quite
savage stabbing.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
She was also hit with some kind of lune tob
jot too, Yeah, and strangled like that feels very personal.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Yeah, And I think there's some evidence given at the
time about the mode if you like the method of
operation and how savage it was. I can't, I honestly
can't explain that. I can't rationalize it for someone to
do that to their sister. I know there's a move
at the moment by those who support Seth Gonzale to
having released I think those who are thinking of that
(25:10):
need to look at what you've just said and the
savagery that had occurred in that house before they support.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
Someone like him.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
In Claudine's case, there was this theory that she had
found out that he was falsifying his university records and
had maybe dabbed him in to his parents, which is
why there was a motive here potentially for him to
be so savage towards her. Do you remember if that
was ever proven.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
No, it wasn't proven, but that was certainly a very
strong suspicion that police held, and unless he begins to
tell the truth, which will never happen, I don't think
we'll ever get to the bottom of that. But that
is the logical conclusion from everything we've heard.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Let's talk about the deaths of Teddy and LLOIV because
in Loyver's case, police in the autopsy report found neck
wounds from a knife that were done post mortem, suggests
that her killer stabbed so many times he kept going
even after she was dead. Like, what does that tell
(26:13):
you about somebody when they just are obviously full of
so much rage that they don't even stop when their
victim is dead.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
I think we'll never know, but my belief is that
he wanted to make sure that the job was done.
He didn't want to take any chance that they may recover.
It's truly savage. I mean on any level that alone
was a loved one. To do that to a loved one.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
There did seem to be some kind of attempt to
make it look like a burglary, like there were some
things placed around, some wardrobes opened, but police did notice
that the house was pretty impeccable. Other than those bits
would it have been for police like super obvious that
this was not a robbery.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
I think I wouldn't say super obvious, but it was
certainly a conclusion that you would reach once you examined
the house properly and worked out I mean, there's it
was sort of an attempt to lead police to thinking
that it was a racist attack. It doesn't quite fit
in with a robbery. The two separate sort of sets
of motivations. If you're a racist, you're not going to
be there for monetary gain, and if you're there from
(27:20):
monetary gain, you're not going to scrawl all that stuff
on the walls calling them names. So it was just
it was incongruous. Really, it didn't fit. It just didn't fit,
as was most things in that case.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
Well, another thing that doesn't fit, which police reenacted was
sef did say that he saw someone that night run
away from the house, one maybe two men. But what's
interesting is how much detailed police have to go into
in reenacting what a suspect tells them happened, because they
actually stepped through everything that he told them and found
(27:50):
out that it just was not physically possible for him
to have gotten downstairs, opened roll the door, got out
onto the road and seen someone run off.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
Right, Yeah, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
But reenactments are really important, and usually they're filmed so
that they can be shown to a jury or a
judge later on. Obviously, but again it was just these
really significant inconsistencies in what he was saying, and the
fact that you could prove that it's not right. What
he's saying is not right, and then the logical conclusion
is it's not an accident, it's not a mistake. This
(28:22):
is a deliberate lie in an attempt to lead police
in a different direction to reality.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
There's also a couple of other bits that no one
could quite explain, although Sef did try to explain them,
which is why because he said he went in and
attempted CPR on his family members and he tried to
tend to his sister's wounds. But he had very little
blood on him, and as you mentioned, like police had
to put in measures to make sure they didn't contaminate
the scene due to the sheer amount of blood at
(28:51):
the scene. And also he had a tiny blue stain
on his jumper which suspiciously matched the shade of blue
that that racist graffiti was sprayed on. He then mentions
that it was raining, so the rain would have washed
the blood away. Like how do investigators in that moment,
noticing these inconsistencies and then hearing those explanations not kind
(29:14):
of roll their eyes and say like sure, mate, Like
how do you handle that and still try and get
him to reveal himself.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
The thing is, when you know you're being fat in
line and it's not true, the worst thing you can
do is to roll your eyes or sort of lose
control or whatever. Obviously the professionalism kicks in, but you
would continue to probe in an effort to get them
to say, you know, And that's what happens. I think
that's what happened with Seth. He was lying about things,
(29:42):
and when he got caught out on things, he dug
himself deeper and deeper into a hole. And that's really
I mean when police are interviewing, the ideal situation, if
you have a transcript of the interview, which is recorded,
you would have one or two lines from the investigator
asking questions, and then a big piece or a big
chunk from the suspect who's answering the questions. What you
(30:04):
don't want is for the investigat to be doing mast
of the talking. You want to draw them out, You
want them to do the master of the talking. You
want them to not dig a hole for themselves. If
they're telling the truth, then there would be no problem.
But the idea is it's not to roll your eyes
or act centicals, to simply plow on and get them
to keep talking.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
With Seph, was it harder to grasp that he could
have done this just from the way he looks? And
we talk about this with victims a lot of the time,
that there is this idea of the perfect victim, how
they look and how they react and how they act
in those times of stressful situations. But in Seph's case,
(30:44):
he was in his twenties, but he looked about twelve.
He looked really, really young, such a babyface.
Speaker 4 (30:50):
He looked really innocent.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Was it hard to look at him like a potential
suspect when he looked like a little boy?
Speaker 3 (30:58):
Look.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
I can't speak for the investigators, but I think I
certainly thought, Jesus, you know, where did this go wrong?
Where did this kid go wrong? And he clearly had
gone wrong? And then as time went by and the
evidence mounted, I think they just accepted that this is
what happened, that he had this evil streak in him obviously,
and he had done this terrible thing. You have to
put your personal feelings aside sometimes. I mean, I've seen
(31:20):
murder cases where the police may have some sympathy for
the murder of domestic violence, for instance, where the victim
may eventually lash out and do something to the offender,
to the person that's hurting them. You have sympathy, but
you can't let it stop you from doing and you
can't let that thinking hold you up.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
You've got to do what you've got to do.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
After the break, Nick reveals how investigators began to catch
on to Seth's lives, ultimately leading to his unraveling.
Speaker 4 (31:51):
Stay with us.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
Do you remember what police uncovered when they started speaking
to Seth's sort of extended circle his friends and colleagues,
because there was some wild claims made by him as
to sort of what he did for a living and
who he was in the world. Do you remember some
of the things he was telling people?
Speaker 3 (32:11):
Yeah? I do.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Recall that he lived a sort of fantasy life, if
you like, where he bragged about things and claim things
and simply went true and all of that came back
to haunt him, obviously, once the police started interviewing all
these associates and fellow students and all of that sort
of stuff. It's yet another motive in my view, that
he had said all these things to people, and if
(32:32):
he had not completed you and he dropped out because
he was failing and not and got cut off by
the family in some way, it would have all sort
of collapsed around him. One of the things that I
think he would have wanted to achieve with the murders
is to have this instant sympathy and empathy from all
his associates, friends, family, and so on, and that they
(32:54):
would not be questioning about some of the crap he
said and dished out. I don't recall much about what
he actually said, but I do remember that once the
police came back about from some of these interviews, they
just said, he's lived. I can't think of the character
in that movie where it's all it's all basically a
facaded lights.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
What's really interesting and I want to get your take
on this is how he may have tried to plan
this murder before that day, Because there was quite a
few fines in his Internet search history to do with
dangerous plants. There was a vial of liquid found taped
underneath a desk, and a suspicious case of food poisoning
(33:33):
that his mum had experience. It did land her in
hospital for a couple of days. Was that used as
evidence in court, the fact that he'd actually planned to
do this another way previously?
Speaker 2 (33:45):
Yes, what had showed, that's absolutely right. And what it
did show is that he was exploring ways of doing
it without getting caught. I don't think your listeners would.
I'm sure they would appreciate the fact that even if
you wipe the search history off your laptop is still there.
Speaker 4 (34:00):
You go, criminals. Make sure you know that.
Speaker 3 (34:02):
I think everyone knows that. I mean, you can't. This
is the thing.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
Technology now is so pervasive, there's almost no privacy. So
what you do is usually you know, you can dig
it up again later on if the authorities come in,
and they can dig it up later on.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
So even back in two thousand and one, and it's
still a possibility.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
But the thing is, it is a fairly key finding
that he was exploring ways to kill people and then
this happens obviously, Well, the only conclusion that can be
drawn is that he was exploring ways to do it
in a way that where he wouldn't get caught if
it was done by stealth. It didn't work out for him,
obviously a new resorted to the more physical approach, but
(34:45):
it certainly was very much a part of the evidence
against him.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
When police made it quite clear that Sef's alibi wasn't legit,
he did claim that he'd driven to find a friend
who just moved to Kingsgrove but didn't know his address
and only realized that when he got there, and so
drove around Kings Grove for a bit before he came
back to meet his friend to go out for dinner
a Planet Hollywood. That he just kind of came up
with another alibi and floated that with police about visiting
(35:11):
a sex worker via taxi, and that kind of explained
away why his car was in the driveway at the
time when his aunt had popped around. Like, what do
you do when someone comes back and says, oh, by
the way, that alibi isn't right, this is the real one.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
You make sure you record it and get them to
commit to it, so it's not just him telling them.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
It had to have been recorded in a proper interview.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
And then each version that he gave that proved to
be untrue is yet another nail in the coffin. So
you need to get them to say it, document the
fact that they've said it, and how they said it,
and when they said it, and where they said it
and so on, and then go about proving that that
version is also not true, and again it's just another
nail in the coffin.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
Unfortunately for him.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
It's funny because he did try and bribe a taxi driver,
but it's pretty easy to find out where a taxi
driver has been on any given day in time, right.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
Yeah, exactly. Look, he wasn't a criminal genius. I think
a lot of what he did was silly really or
probably immature it might be the right word.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
I'm not sure.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
I mean, if he was a great man, I don't
know that he would have done some of these silly
things and thinking that he was going to pull the
all over the police eyes and so on. But look,
at the end of the day, it was just a tragedy.
The whole thing was just a tragedy.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
When was the decision made to bring in an undercover
police officer to try and catch him out because he
did he posted as a gang member, because apparently Sef
was quite intrigued by telling people that he was in
some kind of gang that was called White Dragon Asians
or something he'd made up, and that was a potential
line of inquiry at some stage that this might have
(36:44):
been a gang retaliation because he did mention it.
Speaker 4 (36:48):
But when was the decision made to.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
Bring in an undercover police officer to try and catch
him out.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
Well, it was simply a way of probing him to
see whether he would react to that, which he didn't
go all that well, but it was worth a try
sort of thing. But I think the character I was
looking for, the life that he led was a Walter
Mitty type of life. It's about this person who lives
in a fantasy world and is very liberal with the truth,
telling people all sorts of things that simply aren't true.
(37:15):
And certainly in this case and in any murder case,
when you do come up someone who's a fantasist like that,
among other things, you simply have to take the story
and then tear it down. You have to follow up
and make sure that what has been said is in
fact not true and that it helps the case obviously
down the track.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
What was interesting is that you said it wasn't overly successful,
but it did give police some clues because what that
undercover officer did was try and convince Seph to allow
someone who was already in prison to take the rap
for the murder. And so in doing that, he did
provide them with plans of the layout of the house.
Speaker 4 (37:53):
And he did two things.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
He wrote with his own handwriting on it and wrote
down the times of death of all three victims, something
the police had not released, and they managed to match
his handwriting to the graffiti on the wall. It's so
interesting how they have to pull all these ties together.
But still he did not admit to anything.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
No, but I guess in a way, it's still really
really damning evidence. My sense when I reflected back on
it is that every time he opened his mouth, basically
he dug a deeper hole for himself.
Speaker 3 (38:26):
He was never going to survive this.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
But you know, I go back to the tragedy that
it was and the impact it's had on the family
and the community generally.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
I think was really shocked.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
In this nice suburban street where, on the face of it,
a lovely, loving family lived, there were Christians, and then
this terrible things happened.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
Right now, Mets, It's just it was unfathomable.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
Can we talk a little bit about his behavior with
money in the aftermath of the murders too, because that
can be quite telling. And this has been brought up
in the case of the Menendez brothers too in the
murder of their parents, in that he attempted to access
his inheritance as soon as possible. He sold off a
lot of his families item so that he could get
the money. He also got a victim of crime payout
(39:11):
at one stage, which he used to make upgrades to
his mum's car, which was interesting choice. And then he
also claimed to have a brain tumor and he asked
a family member to give him one hundred thousand dollars
to pay for life saving surgery. Behavior like that does
that set off warning signals to investigators?
Speaker 2 (39:30):
I think it proved that for him not to realize
that one of the things that the police would want
to look at is what he does with money and
the inheritance and seeking it immediately after the event, it's
really dumb, actually just dumb, And obviously the result was
what he didn't want, which is that he was yet
(39:50):
more than that nails in the.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
Coffin for him.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
So he was eventually arrested. It's nearly a year later.
With all of this evidence gathered together, police obviously figure
they now have enough, yeah, to actually put him in
a court room. So at this point they then take
his fingerprints, Yeah, and this leads them to another discovery
which then kind of ties it back into this premeditated
plan to kill them with poison that we've talked about already,
(40:15):
because he'd been sending letters out to food manufacturers telling
them that some of their food was contaminated, and that
was a way he was going to try and tie
it back into his family's death.
Speaker 3 (40:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
Again, not smart at all. But the issue with the
fingerprints is my memory is that at the time he
was charged, he had not been in trouble with the
police before.
Speaker 3 (40:35):
Therefore his fingerprints were not on record.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
But even if they were, we would have to take
them again, obviously, because when you go before a jury,
you can't bring up the fact that someone had been
charged before and therefore we had the fingerprints on the file.
So you have to do it in a way that
does not disclosed to a jury that this person has
done something in the past because it may influence their
decision obviously their thoughts about the person. But again just
(40:58):
to really far fetched, dumb move.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
What was Seph like during the court proceedings. Did he
any stage look remorseful? Did he try to explain anything
that had happened that sort of led police to further
question things that he'd done, Like what was his court
room behavior?
Speaker 2 (41:18):
Like, I mean, I wasn't there, but there was certainly
it was discussed in the office and certainly with the investigators.
I don't recall anyone saying he was remorseful. If he was,
he would have pleaded guilty and not that there was
a certain amount of arrogance and sort of haughty behavior, thinking,
you know, I'm going to beat this, nothing's going to
happen to me. And I think he's maintained that approach
(41:41):
pretty much throughout. There's still no contrition, and I think
the judge took that into account.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
He even tried to access his inheritance to pay for
lawyers right, but ended up with a quart appointed lawyer
in the end.
Speaker 3 (41:52):
Anyway, he did, Yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
Just I mean, it's sort of shameless, really it's the
only word I can think of.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
So he's obviously appealed the sentence that was handed down
to him, and there's been attempts for special inquiries over
many years, the most recent one being twenty twenty one.
Where is Sef Gonzales now in that process? Can he
keep appealing? Can he potentially be released?
Speaker 3 (42:21):
I think he's run out of options.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
I don't think legally, just in the normal system with
appeals he can appeal anymore. He's failed in his appeals.
The only possible thing that may happen now is if
the government of the day says, well, we're going to
have an inquiry, but they would have to have a
bloody good reason to do that, and it simply doesn't exist.
My view is that, and as someone who's dealt in
with homicides for decades, it's a very strong case. It's
(42:47):
an exceptionally strong case, overwhelming evidence which is unable to
be rebutted. So at the end of the day, I mean,
maybe he may get an inquiry, but I'll be gobsmacked
if he did, because it would not be a rational decision.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
What lessons do you think investigators might have learned from
this case when investigation subsequent murder cases. Do you think
there was a lesson in investigators from Sef Gonzales.
Speaker 3 (43:12):
I mean they were two lessons.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
Tenacity, certainly not giving up because there were some hurdles
along the way and he was never going.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
To be cooperative or helpful or tell the truth in
any way.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
But the second thing is that you can't sort of
draw conclusions and reach a position early on. You must
be methodical. You must be thorough, absolutely thorough, and go
through all the possibilities other than the person you suspect
and rule them out one by one, which is what
had to happen here. The idea of a gang, the
(43:42):
idea of overseas people sending someone to kill them, the
idea of a racist attack, the idea of a home
invasion with robbery.
Speaker 3 (43:49):
As a motive.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
All of those had to be ruled out logically and
rationally with all the evidence available to make sure that
the only option, as Sherlock Ames used to say, when
you rule out all the other improbable things, whatever's left
has to be the answer. I mean that was a
torturous prasis and very long pricess. That's why it took
twelve months or so for police to charge him, but
(44:11):
they did everything right. They actually went through the steps,
ruled everything out so that when they went to court
they were on very solid ground.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
Just finally, I'd love to know how cases like the
Gonzales murders impacts you personally, because you see the worst
of the worst during your career. And when we find
out what Sef did in that time, his sister Claudine
died just after four pm, his mum more than an
hour later after she returned home from work, Dad sometime
after that. So this wasn't one fit of rage and passion.
(44:39):
This was over hours and in between he would have
stopped knowing what he's done and then done it again.
Speaker 4 (44:46):
And then there's evidence that he.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
Took a shower afterwards, got himself ready, went out to
dinner with a friend, explained away some other things about
why the phone was busy. Maybe it was them using
dial up internet when people couldn't contact.
Speaker 4 (44:58):
Them at home.
Speaker 1 (44:58):
Like he was really calm and collected, And that is
terrifying to know that someone can do those things and
then just walk back out into the world.
Speaker 4 (45:07):
How do you feel knowing people like that exist?
Speaker 2 (45:10):
Certainly, the impact on investigators is something that and as
time has gone by, I think we're much better at
recognizing that and doing something about it. One of the
things we brought in was mandatory sessions with the counseling.
At least I think my memory was either six months
or twelve months. They do see the worst of society,
human beings at their worst. They also see sometimes people
(45:34):
at their best, human beings at their best doing the
right thing, really taking risks to save others and so on.
But the important thing is to recognize that it's something
that has an impact on people, and therefore you must
make sure that you have a framework in place that
helps them deal with it adequately with professional help. I
spent three years as the chair of the Royal Commission
(45:55):
and the Defense and Military Suicide, as I said, and
we did that for the staff there. I made sure
that that was implemented and every two months all of
the staff had to have a session with the counselors,
and you had the same person all the way through
up to and including the three commissioners.
Speaker 3 (46:10):
We agreed that we would do that as well.
Speaker 2 (46:13):
So I guess while it's rough, and I must say
in my experience, particularly if I had to go to
a post mortem of a child.
Speaker 3 (46:20):
It affected me a lot more than an adult. And
I don't know why.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
I'm not a psychologist, but I mean I have kids.
Most of us do, and for some reason, post mortems
with children really affected me. But we recognized that and
we had things in place, such as regular account mandatory
counseling sessions that helped us to get through all of that,
and we did that also with the Royal Commission. But
(46:45):
the other thing that is very important is obviously the
feel in the office, if you like, of people being
there for each other, looking out for the person sitting
next to them, if they see signs of somebody who's struggling,
actually saying something and saying, look, do you want to
talk about it, Let's see what we can do to help,
and so on. And I know when the police and
it's a hard thing to say people have had mental
(47:07):
health issues because of all the badness that they've seen.
Even if they get better, it's still remembered by the colleagues.
This is a person who I struggled. Is not he
or she has once had a breakdown. It doesn't quite
go away. I don't know what the answer is to that,
but I think it's a societal problem. It's not just
in the uniform services. It's across society, and I hope
(47:28):
and pray that people take notice of some of the stuff.
They came out of the Royal Commission to try and
speak up more about this stuff and put their hand
up if they're not well and get help rather than
the alternative.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
In August two thousand and four, the Gonzales family home
at six Collins Street, North Ride was finally sold for
eight hundred thousand dollars, but that wouldn't be the end
of its controversial life. The agents who sold the property
to the Lynn family, devout Buddhists who'd originally held from
Taiwan and who'd put down an eighty thousand dollars deposit
to secure their new home, didn't tell them about.
Speaker 4 (48:04):
Its grizzly past.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
The Lynn family did not want to live in a
home where three people had been brutally murdered, saying it
would be haunted and would bring the misfortune. They asked
to pull out of the deal, but the agents refused
to refund their deposits, saying they had done nothing wrong.
Those agents would be the first under new South Wales
law to be fined for misleading behavior in promoting the
property for sale, and they had to pay out more
(48:28):
than twenty thousand dollars in penalties. The home did eventually
sell again in two thousand and five for seven hundred
and twenty thousand dollars to pat Olivio and her partner.
Speaker 4 (48:37):
Jeremy Mumford, who knew its dark story.
Speaker 1 (48:40):
They told Women's Day in twenty seventeen that they still
get really annoyed when people constantly ask them about the
house's history, saying that all happened before their time and
that they've had nothing but a good feeling living there
to this day, though, true crime fanatics will still drive
past the address just to see the exact place that
Sef Gonzalez decided to take the lives of his entire family.
(49:04):
Thanks to Nick for telling us his story. True Rome
Conversations is hosted by me Claire Murphy. The producer is
Tarlie Blackman, and we've had audio designed by Jacob Brown.
Thanks so much for listening. I'll be back next week
with another True Crime Conversation.
True Crime Conversations acknowledges the traditional owners of land and
waters that this podcast was recorded on. On a quiet
street in Sydney in two thousand and one, twenty year
old Sef Gonzales would return to his family home to
find his father, mother, and sister all dead, stabbed, beaten,
(00:27):
and strangled. In his panicked call to Tribouleau, he would
mistakenly believe that they'd all been shot. There was so
much blood at the scene he couldn't initially tell what
had really happened to his family. What actually occurred in
the Gonzalez family home that day would be followed by
a nearly year long investigation that would see accusations of
dodgy business deals, hit men, gangland, retaliation, bribery, revenge, and poison.
(00:53):
But while this sounds like the plot line for a
season of Underbelly, in reality, the truth about the Gonzales
family murders was much simpler, much more sinister, and much
closer to home. I'm Claire Murphy and this is True
(01:14):
Crime Conversations, a podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes
by speaking to the people who know the most about them.
When New South Wales police stepped into the investigation into
the murder of Teddy Gonzales, his wife, loev and daughter
Claudine in the Sydney suburb of North Ryde in July
two thousand and one. They would find the only surviving
family member, Sef, seemingly devastated over the brutal debts of
(01:38):
his father, mother, and sister. He'd been out with a
friend on the night his family died, captured on CCTV
footage out at dinner and then at an arcade playing
video games. He arrived home to the confrontational scene, telling
police that he'd try to revive them using CPR. He
said he also tended to the wounds on his sister's body,
But why was there only a tiny bit of blood
(02:01):
on his clothing. Sef also said that he wasn't home
that afternoon. Why was his distinct green Ford Fiesta in
the driveway, Who were the men Sef had seen running
from the house, and was the racist graffiti on a
wall inside the home the real reason his family was targeted.
With all these questions adding up, investigators had to unravel
(02:23):
the Gonzales family murders with a nearly twelve months investigation
using tactics that would normally be used in organized crime investigations.
So what did the undercover operatives and bug phones discover
and why would one statement from Seph make his auntie
finally realize what went down that day. Nick Caldas has
(02:45):
had a long career with the New South Wales Police.
Arriving from Egypt as a child, he would grow up
wanting to be a police officer. At age twenty one,
that became his reality, working as a hostage negotiator and
an undercover cop before becoming one of the most senior
officers here in Australia as the New South Wales Deputy Commissioner.
During his time on the force, he led some of
(03:06):
New South Wales's biggest criminal investigations, from the murder of
MP John Newman to the disappearance of Samountha Knight. He
would also oversee the investigation into the murder of the
Gonzales family. Could the baby face surviving member of the
Gonzales family really have killed his entire family? He sat
down with us to remember his time on the force
(03:27):
and explain how they finally caught the real killer of
Teddy Leeuver and clothing Gonzales. So you join the New
South Wales Police at the tender age of twenty four,
but you've grown up on the force during what would
be quite a tumultuous time for New South Wales Police.
There's been a fair bit of scandal which we've seen
(03:48):
play out on TV shows across Australia in recent years.
What was it like for you as a young officer
being surrounded by that.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
I wouldn't say I was surrounded by controversy or corruption,
and I think on by and large, I think probably
ninety something percent of police in New South Wales went
out their work and we're doing a good job. Was
a minority obviously that was up to no good and
that all came out later on, But I didn't think
it was visible to anyway. Men and people who are
doing bad things, corrupt things that discuss it. That It's
(04:18):
not something that comes out on a daily basis in
the meal room.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
So that I'm sitting in the lunch room going, hey,
how's about this bridebite just received?
Speaker 3 (04:24):
No no, no.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
I mean those who are up to no good would
talk to others who are up to no good. But yeah,
I my strong sense and belief is that it was
a very small minority, but they obviously tainted everybody else
with that stench.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Can you tell me how one ends up as a
hostage negotiator?
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Sure, you have to apply.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Obviously you have to have a certain number of years
and I can't remember, but you certainly have to have
experience as a police officer before they take you. In
the metropolitan area, they tend to go for detectives, because
detectives are not if you're in uniform, you have a
shift and you're on the truck, and if an incident
happens and you get taken off the truck, obviously you've
got a shortage and stuff. Then on that shift. But
(05:04):
detectives you can put whatever statements you're taking or interviews
you're doing or whatever, and go to a siege or
whatever incidents has occurred. So they tend to gravitate towards detectives.
In the country, they tend to do that. They're not
as fussy. You have to apply. You have to have
people who will give your references to say this person
is a good communicator, he connects with people well, and
(05:26):
so on. So you're a detective, you have the time
and then you have to go through a fairly strenuous
selection process. In particular, it includes a lot of psychological
testing to make sure that you're not someone who's going
to fly off the handle. And the motto is that
if you can't control yourself, how are you going to
control anyone else. So you go through a two week
course and you can fail, but if you pass, you
(05:48):
go on a team, and there's a team of fourth
the Negasiators, and it's pretty much your way across the
Western world, the Indians speaking world, at least, there's a
team of four usually, so there's a team leader, the
primary who primary negastiat who does all the talking, the
secondary who sticks with and backs up and takes notes
for the primary, and then the gopher as they call it,
which is the starting point. If you come on a team,
(06:08):
you usually start as a gopher. You get the coffee.
You go back and forth between the team leader and
so on, and then negotiat us and the eventually you
go from gopher to secondary to first and then if
you're lucky, you get the team leader.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
I was lucky.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
I got the team leader, but I had a lot
of years as a primary, which is good. The other
thing is you're not on call all the time because
that would obviously be draining. So there's usually five or
six and I think there's more now teams, and so
every fifth or sixth week, your team is on call
for that week and you have to be on standby.
In those days, we had pages. I don't know where
the young kids today know what pages are, but.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
This I think maybe drug dealers do, but not so many.
Just average people though.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
But your pager would go off to contact the duty
Operations inspector and you'd get writing instructions from wherever you
are about where you are, and then it's blue lights
and siren to get to a siege or whatever.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
It is that they need you to go to.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
We are going to focus in on the Gonzales murders shortly,
but other than that case, what are some of the
other high profile cases that you ended up working on
in New South Wales.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
Of course there's quite a few. So I had about
a dozen years and the homicide squad.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
In the last four or so I was actually the commander,
and I just clarify that I was not the officer
in charge of the Gonzales case. I was the quander
of the homicide squad and therefore was briefed and consulted
and we discussed the lines of investigation and so on.
The officer in charge who did a very good job
as a detective sergeant at that stage. He's now Chief
Superintendent Mick she who's legendary homicide detective.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
He's done a lot of really good work.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Some of the other cases, probably the most prominent one
that sticks out in my mind is the murder of
John Newman, the member of Parliament nineteen ninety four. I
started off as one of the team on it, but
then eventually a short time later I became the commander
of it and I stuck with it obviously after that,
and it was a seven year investigation between murder and conviction,
and it's been torturous, I have to say so. Essentially,
(08:01):
John Newman was killed by a political opponent who's now
been convicted and sentenced to life released, a fellow called
fum Can. We had a series of hearings at the
Crime Commission where we grilled people. Basically, he had approached
a number of criminal groups to do the murder who had.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Rejected the offer, so essentially like looking for hit man, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
And we managed to get those people who were approached
who had rejected and not done anything to roll as
they say and actually tell us what happened and then
give evidence of that. Later on, we tracked his movements
on the mobile phone. We probably one of the first
cases to investigate using mobile phone data ninety four. It
was revolutionary and we proved that he was at the
(08:42):
scene of the murder at the time of the murder,
and then later on he goes to Voyager Point footbridge
in George's River and he makes a number of course
from there an attempt to alibi himself after the murder,
and drops the gun into the river. We dredged the
river sometime later and found the gun and it was
matched ballistically. We had the hearings that the crime commissioned.
(09:02):
Then we had a kurenter's inquest because the DPP didn't
feel we had enoughter charge, and then we had a
committal hearing. Then we had three Supreme Court trials. One
was aboarded, one was a hung jury eleven to one,
and the third time he was convicted. The other guys
involved were acquitted. That was a hard fought one. It
was very much under the intense glare of media and
(09:23):
public attention.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
You would think after you leave the New South Wales
Police Force you would live a much quieter, sedate life.
But that seems that is not in your DNA because
you've done so many things. You've led investigations into chemical
weapons use in Syria, you did an independent review of
the christ Church shootings. How do you think these roles
after leaving the police force have shaped you? And that
(09:47):
whole perspective on global justice and accountability.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
That notes for others to judge.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
But I had a bit of a policy, if you
like that, if something came up and I thought it
was worthwhile, I found it difficult to say. No. I
probably was not ready and I'm probably not quite ready
yet to sit at home in my pajamas.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
I might get to that, but I'm not there. And
obviously the thing that took.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Up three years of my life was the Royal Commission
into Defense and Veteran Suicide, which was I think quite
a It was certainly a noble cause and I'm honored
that I was asked to serve in that role. But
a lot of the roles you've said, and I was
also the Director of Internal Overside in UN the United
Nations Relief Works Agency, which is the United Nations agency
that deals with all the Palestine refugee issues in five
(10:32):
countries eleven On, Syria, Jordan, Gaza, and the West Bank.
And I had offices and staff in each of the locations,
and we lived in Jordan for three years headquarters.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Well, I carried that out.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
If something comes up and I think I can do
some good in it, and I'm not going to stuff
it up, you know, like Mace Cops.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
I operate on the basis of buy it off more
than you can chew and.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Chew like hell m which then leads you to write
an entire book on top of all of that too.
Speaker 4 (11:00):
So you still have not sat still for a minute, have.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
You not quite mad?
Speaker 2 (11:05):
The book was a torture us brasis as well, where
I have to say, I've not done this before. I'm
certainly not an author. What I've There's a few things
that sort of convinced me to do it. One is
an encouragement from friends in particularly Gary Jubilin. He's written
a couple of books himself and we worked together in
homicide for many many years. But the other fellow who
(11:26):
sort of convinced me to do this is a fellow
called Bob Bear. It's Baer. He's an American fellow x CIA.
He was in the CIA and living on throughout the
Lebanese Civil War. He's certainly got some stories to tell.
So he read his book. It's called The Company We Keep.
In America, they tend to refer collocally to the CIA
as the Company. And it's a really good book, The
(11:48):
Company We Keep.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
He dedicated his book.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
To his kids, and he opens the book up by saying,
I hope this is this goes some way towards explaining
where the hell I was.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
And he said to me, you do it. You don't
do it for yourself.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Sometimes you do it for your family, your kids, grandkids,
great grandkids. I mean, we've been on a bit of
a journey out of Upper Egypt in the south to Cairo,
and then from Cairo to Sydney, and then for me,
I've gone to a lot of other places obviously, and
I felt it would be good to have a record
of that for the family and for the kids, and
for my community, the Egyptian community, the Coptic community, the
(12:21):
Arabic community, the migrant community in Australia. I hope I've
done my best to be a somewhat positive role model.
And I used to try and attend all the recruitment days,
particularly in Southwest Sydney, where we talked to the communities.
Not that I was sort of exhibit A, but they
would say, look here is someone who is just a
kid from Marrickville and.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
This migrant boy he's achieved.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Yeah, if I can do it, I'm very ordinary. So
if I can do it, I think anyone can. And
that was my message, you know you can do this.
There shouldn't be no glass ceilings. I'm happy to have
breaken through a couple of glass ceilings. And I'm not
a lawyer, and I'm certainly not a judge, and I'm
maybe the first one to head up a federal royal
commission without being a lawyer. My two co commissioners one
(13:06):
was a Supreme Court judge, former Supreme Court Judge James Douglass,
and the other one was a psychiatrist and pharmacy of
National Mental Health Commission. So I think the three of
us brought really good perspectives to that problem and it
worked quite well.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
You're listening to true crime conversations with me, Claire Murphy.
I'm speaking with former Deputy Commissioner of the New South
Wales Police Force, Nick called us up. Next, Nick tells
us about the Gonzales family murders and how Seph Gonzales
reported his family's death to police. Let's talk about the
Gonzales murders and look at the Gonzales family themselves. What
(13:45):
do we know about their lives and who they were
before they immigrated to Australia from the Philippines.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
They're a religious family.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
They were Catholic, quite quite law abiding and hard working
mum and dad and the daughter obviously, and the son
and somewhere along the line. And I'm not a psychologist,
but the son obviously sEH lost his way emotionally or
ethically morally. To kill your own family because you want
(14:14):
the inheritance, it's pretty bad. But he was failing, and
there were very high expectations. I think, as mass migrant
firmary's experience, his dad had very high expectations expecting him
to go to UNI and to study and to do
all these things which he simply wasn't up to doing.
And he couldn't in my view, he couldn't admit that.
So the answer was he wanted the lifestyle and the
(14:35):
car and the house and the money and whatever, and
this thing stood in his way, with his father insisting
that he actually do well at studying and graduating and
so on, so he took the ultimate step of killing them.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Well, let's talk about that family dynamic for a moment,
because they did immigrate after a major earthquake in the
Philippines destroyed dad's business, and apparently Seth was pulled from
the rubble by his dad, Teddy, So he saved his
life back then, which is ironic seeing as he would
take his life later.
Speaker 4 (15:06):
But you're right.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Seth started a medical degree, failed it, then shifted to law,
and from what his parents thought at the time, he
was actually doing remarkably well. He joined the family firm
as a paralegal and it specialist. So for a while
there looked like things were going really well. But then
it seems that wills were starting to fall off because
(15:30):
Seph wanted to be a musician. He was in a
boy band that played at some nightclubs, etc. He'd gotten
a girlfriend, and I'm guessing that family dynamic, as you mentioned,
which does run through quite a lot of migrant families,
is a real high expectation that you will be academic
and that you will deliver a really satisfying career result
as a result of that academic.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
Was that what we think? I mean?
Speaker 1 (15:55):
He said he did this for the inheritance, But was
that the beginning of where the will started to fall off?
That pressure on him to become something that he didn't
want to be.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
And he was failing.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
He was actually in you and he was never going
to be able to live up to I don't think
he was ever going to finish and graduate and whatever.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
He simply wasn't up to it.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
How did he then make his parents think he was
being successful.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Well, he didn't tell him where he was and what
he was doing. Basically, there's an old story. Actually it's
probably illustrates the point you're making among migrant communities. A
fellow called Rami Mallick, who's an actor who played Freddie
Mercury in the movie About Queen His Egyptian like me,
and he won the Best Actor Oscar Award. So he
(16:35):
rang his mom allegedly and said to her mom, I've
won the Best Actor Oscar Award. And she said to him,
that's nice, son, but you're not a doctor. So that's
the expectation that if you're not a doctor. I'm a
bit of a failure in many ways. But I think
reality sort of was surrounding him and haunting him, and
(16:59):
he got to a point where he simply would have
had to admit to his father and family at some
stays and I'm failing. I'm not going to do what
you think I'm up to. And he didn't know how
they take that. They probably desame him and whatever, and
so his answer was to not confront the problem and
talk to them about it is to kill him. Now,
how he went from that to killing his parents and
(17:22):
sister and so on, I really don't know. I can't
comprehend that mentality of going to that really extreme, horrible
evil conclusion, but he certainly did that.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Well, let's talk about the crime itself. It's the tenth
of July two thousand and one. So Teddy, his dad,
Loiver mum have gone off to work in separate cars.
His sister Claudine is home from school for school holidays.
She's been shifted down to Melbourne because in this strict
parenting style that they have, she got a boyfriend in Sydney,
(17:56):
so they shifted her away to live somewhere else in
order for her to focus on her studies. Right, So
she's back, she's a couple of days away from returning
to Melbourne, so she's getting some study and she stayed
at home. What do we know of Seth's movements or
what Seth said his movements were that day.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
There were a lot of inconsistencies in what he said,
which were proven in the evidence and produced in court,
and it was one of the things that brought him
undone is that he lied. He tried to change his
version a number of times, and it's just got worse
and worse for him. He could not account for his
whereabouts at the time of the murder, and there were
neighbors who had seen the car and the driveway and
so on. I can't recall exact details, but I do
(18:34):
recall that it was a critical factor in the case
against him.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Lying is never good.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
For someone who's accused of murder. Being caught out is
obviously very bad. And then when you put your foot
in it further and create concoct more lies that you
caught out about. And there were records of his movements
through entry into buildings and other things that were produced
as well. It was a very thorough methodical sort of
gathering and timeline that was put together by Mikshi and Esteem,
(19:00):
and ultimately the jury was convinced that is they were right.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Soliver's sister is supporting her nephew through this. She thinks
that he's devastated by the murder of his family members.
So she's sitting with him while he's being interviewed by police,
and he said that he had popped home, but he'd
sat in the car in the driveway because it was
raining at around six pm, And she recalls like snatching
(19:25):
her hand away from him because in that moment, she
realizes that he's lying because she had gone to the
house at six pm and she knew full well it
wasn't raining, and she had seen his car in the
driveway and knew that he wasn't in it. But police
realized that she realizes that he's lying, and then they
recruit her to try and get his confession. Yep, that's
(19:48):
really clever. Did that work though?
Speaker 2 (19:50):
After some extent that did He told her things that
he probably didn't mean to and particularly didn't want the
police to sort of hear. But it sat human dynamic
where you see and the Lynka family murders was the
other case where a lot of people stuck with the offenda,
thinking the guy, he's lost his loved ones. You know,
we've got to try and support him and what have you.
(20:10):
You might recall that famous moment was Sep Gonzales sang
a hymn at the funeral for his parents, and.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
There washing some of the Mariah Carey song, didn't he
it was one fine day or something, if I remember.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Rightly, There wasn't a dry eye in the house. It
was this terrible story about this kid who'd lost his
family and we must all feel sorry for him, which
makes it even more evil. I have to say, I
mean to do something as horrible as that and then
soak up the adulation and sympathies in itself pretty bad.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
What was interesting, too, is police said that they kind
of knew from the Triple O call onwards that something
wasn't right with Seph, because while he seemed to be
very distraught and he seemed to be sobbing when they
arrived at the scene, he wasn't actually crying and he
gave very clear answers to directives and questions. Is that
(21:05):
a bit of a give way when someone is a
little bit too on the ball.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
Yeah, and my memory is that there were no tears.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
But yeah, I think call it the gut feeling, and
certainly most homicide investigators would have this. Within the first
few hours. You tend to get a bit of a
gut feeling. And my belief is that it's usually right.
Sometimes it's wrong. It's not one hundred percent, but I
know in the Newman murder, literally within a few hours
we were thinking the murderer was our man. In that one,
(21:34):
we had ninety seven lines of inquiry and we had
to eliminate all of them before we could charge anyone,
which we did. But you eventually land on the one,
and certainly in the Seth Gonzales murder, they very quickly
landed on belief that he one was not being truthful.
The body language is really important, nonverbal communications, inconsistencies in
the stories, lies that were able to be proved as lies,
(21:58):
deliberate lies that couldn't possibly be a mistake, and quite
a large number of those, and then if you add
all that up together, it becomes a very compelling circum
stential case.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
They did have to rule out some other lines of
inquiry though, because there is the potential racial hate crime
because of the graffiti. There's also a lot of conversation
about Teddy's business. He worked as a lawyer helping Filipino
immigrants come into Australia and do their documentation, and he
had been charged with falsifying some documents. He was later
cleared of that, but there was this phone call that
(22:29):
a colleague overheard that he was arguing with somebody back
in the Philippines over some property and that there was
a threat to kill his family. So there was a
lot of other lines of inquiry that were followed. Seph
wasn't the only.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
One right now, And to be fair and any murder investigation,
you absolutely have to follow all those other lines of
inquiries to the nth degree and rule them out because
if you don't, they will be brought up in court
and the defense will say you haven't done your job.
There are other possibilities, our client is innocent, etc. So
it's really crucial in any murder investigation to actually listen
(23:03):
to and follow up on any other possibility really other
than the person you ultimately charge, to make sure that
there is nothing there.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
And certainly that was the case in the Seth Gonzales case.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Can we talk about the injuries to the victims, because
it's interesting when you look at the three different victims.
So Claudine, his younger sister, was the first to be killed.
What do we know about her death?
Speaker 3 (23:31):
I think it was quite horrible, obviously.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
I mean this might be distressing for some of the listeners,
but I wasn't at the scene, but I'm told there
are metal grids that police use in a crime scene
that are off the ground, lifted off the ground about
four or five inches, and there was so much blood
both with Claudine's murder and the parents' murder, that they
had to put a number of those to step on
(23:54):
so that an't disturbed the scene until it's photographed and captured. Fully,
there's a huge amount of blood everywhere. Really, and sorry
they digress lightly. One of the things I and the
senior police really have to worry about in these sorts
of cases is the mental health and well being of
the homicide investigator seeing the worst of humanity in that
(24:16):
sort of situation, which I think we do reasonably well.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
Now.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
I'm not going to say it was perfect always, but
it certainly is now.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
But one of the things that I was briefed on.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Is the sheer quantity of blood that had been spilled
Beth in Claudine's murder and their parents' murder, there's quite
savage stabbing.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
She was also hit with some kind of lune tob
jot too, Yeah, and strangled like that feels very personal.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Yeah, And I think there's some evidence given at the
time about the mode if you like the method of
operation and how savage it was. I can't, I honestly
can't explain that. I can't rationalize it for someone to
do that to their sister. I know there's a move
at the moment by those who support Seth Gonzale to
having released I think those who are thinking of that
(25:10):
need to look at what you've just said and the
savagery that had occurred in that house before they support.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
Someone like him.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
In Claudine's case, there was this theory that she had
found out that he was falsifying his university records and
had maybe dabbed him in to his parents, which is
why there was a motive here potentially for him to
be so savage towards her. Do you remember if that
was ever proven.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
No, it wasn't proven, but that was certainly a very
strong suspicion that police held, and unless he begins to
tell the truth, which will never happen, I don't think
we'll ever get to the bottom of that. But that
is the logical conclusion from everything we've heard.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Let's talk about the deaths of Teddy and LLOIV because
in Loyver's case, police in the autopsy report found neck
wounds from a knife that were done post mortem, suggests
that her killer stabbed so many times he kept going
even after she was dead. Like, what does that tell
(26:13):
you about somebody when they just are obviously full of
so much rage that they don't even stop when their
victim is dead.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
I think we'll never know, but my belief is that
he wanted to make sure that the job was done.
He didn't want to take any chance that they may recover.
It's truly savage. I mean on any level that alone
was a loved one. To do that to a loved one.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
There did seem to be some kind of attempt to
make it look like a burglary, like there were some
things placed around, some wardrobes opened, but police did notice
that the house was pretty impeccable. Other than those bits
would it have been for police like super obvious that
this was not a robbery.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
I think I wouldn't say super obvious, but it was
certainly a conclusion that you would reach once you examined
the house properly and worked out I mean, there's it
was sort of an attempt to lead police to thinking
that it was a racist attack. It doesn't quite fit
in with a robbery. The two separate sort of sets
of motivations. If you're a racist, you're not going to
be there for monetary gain, and if you're there from
(27:20):
monetary gain, you're not going to scrawl all that stuff
on the walls calling them names. So it was just
it was incongruous. Really, it didn't fit. It just didn't fit,
as was most things in that case.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
Well, another thing that doesn't fit, which police reenacted was
sef did say that he saw someone that night run
away from the house, one maybe two men. But what's
interesting is how much detailed police have to go into
in reenacting what a suspect tells them happened, because they
actually stepped through everything that he told them and found
(27:50):
out that it just was not physically possible for him
to have gotten downstairs, opened roll the door, got out
onto the road and seen someone run off.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
Right, Yeah, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
But reenactments are really important, and usually they're filmed so
that they can be shown to a jury or a
judge later on. Obviously, but again it was just these
really significant inconsistencies in what he was saying, and the
fact that you could prove that it's not right. What
he's saying is not right, and then the logical conclusion
is it's not an accident, it's not a mistake. This
(28:22):
is a deliberate lie in an attempt to lead police
in a different direction to reality.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
There's also a couple of other bits that no one
could quite explain, although Sef did try to explain them,
which is why because he said he went in and
attempted CPR on his family members and he tried to
tend to his sister's wounds. But he had very little
blood on him, and as you mentioned, like police had
to put in measures to make sure they didn't contaminate
the scene due to the sheer amount of blood at
(28:51):
the scene. And also he had a tiny blue stain
on his jumper which suspiciously matched the shade of blue
that that racist graffiti was sprayed on. He then mentions
that it was raining, so the rain would have washed
the blood away. Like how do investigators in that moment,
noticing these inconsistencies and then hearing those explanations not kind
(29:14):
of roll their eyes and say like sure, mate, Like
how do you handle that and still try and get
him to reveal himself.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
The thing is, when you know you're being fat in
line and it's not true, the worst thing you can
do is to roll your eyes or sort of lose
control or whatever. Obviously the professionalism kicks in, but you
would continue to probe in an effort to get them
to say, you know, And that's what happens. I think
that's what happened with Seth. He was lying about things,
(29:42):
and when he got caught out on things, he dug
himself deeper and deeper into a hole. And that's really
I mean when police are interviewing, the ideal situation, if
you have a transcript of the interview, which is recorded,
you would have one or two lines from the investigator
asking questions, and then a big piece or a big
chunk from the suspect who's answering the questions. What you
(30:04):
don't want is for the investigat to be doing mast
of the talking. You want to draw them out, You
want them to do the master of the talking. You
want them to not dig a hole for themselves. If
they're telling the truth, then there would be no problem.
But the idea is it's not to roll your eyes
or act centicals, to simply plow on and get them
to keep talking.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
With Seph, was it harder to grasp that he could
have done this just from the way he looks? And
we talk about this with victims a lot of the time,
that there is this idea of the perfect victim, how
they look and how they react and how they act
in those times of stressful situations. But in Seph's case,
(30:44):
he was in his twenties, but he looked about twelve.
He looked really, really young, such a babyface.
Speaker 4 (30:50):
He looked really innocent.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Was it hard to look at him like a potential
suspect when he looked like a little boy?
Speaker 3 (30:58):
Look.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
I can't speak for the investigators, but I think I
certainly thought, Jesus, you know, where did this go wrong?
Where did this kid go wrong? And he clearly had
gone wrong? And then as time went by and the
evidence mounted, I think they just accepted that this is
what happened, that he had this evil streak in him obviously,
and he had done this terrible thing. You have to
put your personal feelings aside sometimes. I mean, I've seen
(31:20):
murder cases where the police may have some sympathy for
the murder of domestic violence, for instance, where the victim
may eventually lash out and do something to the offender,
to the person that's hurting them. You have sympathy, but
you can't let it stop you from doing and you
can't let that thinking hold you up.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
You've got to do what you've got to do.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
After the break, Nick reveals how investigators began to catch
on to Seth's lives, ultimately leading to his unraveling.
Speaker 4 (31:51):
Stay with us.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
Do you remember what police uncovered when they started speaking
to Seth's sort of extended circle his friends and colleagues,
because there was some wild claims made by him as
to sort of what he did for a living and
who he was in the world. Do you remember some
of the things he was telling people?
Speaker 3 (32:11):
Yeah? I do.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Recall that he lived a sort of fantasy life, if
you like, where he bragged about things and claim things
and simply went true and all of that came back
to haunt him, obviously, once the police started interviewing all
these associates and fellow students and all of that sort
of stuff. It's yet another motive in my view, that
he had said all these things to people, and if
(32:32):
he had not completed you and he dropped out because
he was failing and not and got cut off by
the family in some way, it would have all sort
of collapsed around him. One of the things that I
think he would have wanted to achieve with the murders
is to have this instant sympathy and empathy from all
his associates, friends, family, and so on, and that they
(32:54):
would not be questioning about some of the crap he
said and dished out. I don't recall much about what
he actually said, but I do remember that once the
police came back about from some of these interviews, they
just said, he's lived. I can't think of the character
in that movie where it's all it's all basically a
facaded lights.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
What's really interesting and I want to get your take
on this is how he may have tried to plan
this murder before that day, Because there was quite a
few fines in his Internet search history to do with
dangerous plants. There was a vial of liquid found taped
underneath a desk, and a suspicious case of food poisoning
(33:33):
that his mum had experience. It did land her in
hospital for a couple of days. Was that used as
evidence in court, the fact that he'd actually planned to
do this another way previously?
Speaker 2 (33:45):
Yes, what had showed, that's absolutely right. And what it
did show is that he was exploring ways of doing
it without getting caught. I don't think your listeners would.
I'm sure they would appreciate the fact that even if
you wipe the search history off your laptop is still there.
Speaker 4 (34:00):
You go, criminals. Make sure you know that.
Speaker 3 (34:02):
I think everyone knows that. I mean, you can't. This
is the thing.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
Technology now is so pervasive, there's almost no privacy. So
what you do is usually you know, you can dig
it up again later on if the authorities come in,
and they can dig it up later on.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
So even back in two thousand and one, and it's
still a possibility.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
But the thing is, it is a fairly key finding
that he was exploring ways to kill people and then
this happens obviously, Well, the only conclusion that can be
drawn is that he was exploring ways to do it
in a way that where he wouldn't get caught if
it was done by stealth. It didn't work out for him,
obviously a new resorted to the more physical approach, but
(34:45):
it certainly was very much a part of the evidence
against him.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
When police made it quite clear that Sef's alibi wasn't legit,
he did claim that he'd driven to find a friend
who just moved to Kingsgrove but didn't know his address
and only realized that when he got there, and so
drove around Kings Grove for a bit before he came
back to meet his friend to go out for dinner
a Planet Hollywood. That he just kind of came up
with another alibi and floated that with police about visiting
(35:11):
a sex worker via taxi, and that kind of explained
away why his car was in the driveway at the
time when his aunt had popped around. Like, what do
you do when someone comes back and says, oh, by
the way, that alibi isn't right, this is the real one.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
You make sure you record it and get them to
commit to it, so it's not just him telling them.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
It had to have been recorded in a proper interview.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
And then each version that he gave that proved to
be untrue is yet another nail in the coffin. So
you need to get them to say it, document the
fact that they've said it, and how they said it,
and when they said it, and where they said it
and so on, and then go about proving that that
version is also not true, and again it's just another
nail in the coffin.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
Unfortunately for him.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
It's funny because he did try and bribe a taxi driver,
but it's pretty easy to find out where a taxi
driver has been on any given day in time, right.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
Yeah, exactly. Look, he wasn't a criminal genius. I think
a lot of what he did was silly really or
probably immature it might be the right word.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
I'm not sure.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
I mean, if he was a great man, I don't
know that he would have done some of these silly
things and thinking that he was going to pull the
all over the police eyes and so on. But look,
at the end of the day, it was just a tragedy.
The whole thing was just a tragedy.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
When was the decision made to bring in an undercover
police officer to try and catch him out because he
did he posted as a gang member, because apparently Sef
was quite intrigued by telling people that he was in
some kind of gang that was called White Dragon Asians
or something he'd made up, and that was a potential
line of inquiry at some stage that this might have
(36:44):
been a gang retaliation because he did mention it.
Speaker 4 (36:48):
But when was the decision made to.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
Bring in an undercover police officer to try and catch
him out.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
Well, it was simply a way of probing him to
see whether he would react to that, which he didn't
go all that well, but it was worth a try
sort of thing. But I think the character I was
looking for, the life that he led was a Walter
Mitty type of life. It's about this person who lives
in a fantasy world and is very liberal with the truth,
telling people all sorts of things that simply aren't true.
(37:15):
And certainly in this case and in any murder case,
when you do come up someone who's a fantasist like that,
among other things, you simply have to take the story
and then tear it down. You have to follow up
and make sure that what has been said is in
fact not true and that it helps the case obviously
down the track.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
What was interesting is that you said it wasn't overly successful,
but it did give police some clues because what that
undercover officer did was try and convince Seph to allow
someone who was already in prison to take the rap
for the murder. And so in doing that, he did
provide them with plans of the layout of the house.
Speaker 4 (37:53):
And he did two things.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
He wrote with his own handwriting on it and wrote
down the times of death of all three victims, something
the police had not released, and they managed to match
his handwriting to the graffiti on the wall. It's so
interesting how they have to pull all these ties together.
But still he did not admit to anything.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
No, but I guess in a way, it's still really
really damning evidence. My sense when I reflected back on
it is that every time he opened his mouth, basically
he dug a deeper hole for himself.
Speaker 3 (38:26):
He was never going to survive this.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
But you know, I go back to the tragedy that
it was and the impact it's had on the family
and the community generally.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
I think was really shocked.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
In this nice suburban street where, on the face of it,
a lovely, loving family lived, there were Christians, and then
this terrible things happened.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
Right now, Mets, It's just it was unfathomable.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
Can we talk a little bit about his behavior with
money in the aftermath of the murders too, because that
can be quite telling. And this has been brought up
in the case of the Menendez brothers too in the
murder of their parents, in that he attempted to access
his inheritance as soon as possible. He sold off a
lot of his families item so that he could get
the money. He also got a victim of crime payout
(39:11):
at one stage, which he used to make upgrades to
his mum's car, which was interesting choice. And then he
also claimed to have a brain tumor and he asked
a family member to give him one hundred thousand dollars
to pay for life saving surgery. Behavior like that does
that set off warning signals to investigators?
Speaker 2 (39:30):
I think it proved that for him not to realize
that one of the things that the police would want
to look at is what he does with money and
the inheritance and seeking it immediately after the event, it's
really dumb, actually just dumb, And obviously the result was
what he didn't want, which is that he was yet
(39:50):
more than that nails in the.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
Coffin for him.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
So he was eventually arrested. It's nearly a year later.
With all of this evidence gathered together, police obviously figure
they now have enough, yeah, to actually put him in
a court room. So at this point they then take
his fingerprints, Yeah, and this leads them to another discovery
which then kind of ties it back into this premeditated
plan to kill them with poison that we've talked about already,
(40:15):
because he'd been sending letters out to food manufacturers telling
them that some of their food was contaminated, and that
was a way he was going to try and tie
it back into his family's death.
Speaker 3 (40:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
Again, not smart at all. But the issue with the
fingerprints is my memory is that at the time he
was charged, he had not been in trouble with the
police before.
Speaker 3 (40:35):
Therefore his fingerprints were not on record.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
But even if they were, we would have to take
them again, obviously, because when you go before a jury,
you can't bring up the fact that someone had been
charged before and therefore we had the fingerprints on the file.
So you have to do it in a way that
does not disclosed to a jury that this person has
done something in the past because it may influence their
decision obviously their thoughts about the person. But again just
(40:58):
to really far fetched, dumb move.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
What was Seph like during the court proceedings. Did he
any stage look remorseful? Did he try to explain anything
that had happened that sort of led police to further
question things that he'd done, Like what was his court
room behavior?
Speaker 2 (41:18):
Like, I mean, I wasn't there, but there was certainly
it was discussed in the office and certainly with the investigators.
I don't recall anyone saying he was remorseful. If he was,
he would have pleaded guilty and not that there was
a certain amount of arrogance and sort of haughty behavior, thinking,
you know, I'm going to beat this, nothing's going to
happen to me. And I think he's maintained that approach
(41:41):
pretty much throughout. There's still no contrition, and I think
the judge took that into account.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
He even tried to access his inheritance to pay for
lawyers right, but ended up with a quart appointed lawyer
in the end.
Speaker 3 (41:52):
Anyway, he did, Yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
Just I mean, it's sort of shameless, really it's the
only word I can think of.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
So he's obviously appealed the sentence that was handed down
to him, and there's been attempts for special inquiries over
many years, the most recent one being twenty twenty one.
Where is Sef Gonzales now in that process? Can he
keep appealing? Can he potentially be released?
Speaker 3 (42:21):
I think he's run out of options.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
I don't think legally, just in the normal system with
appeals he can appeal anymore. He's failed in his appeals.
The only possible thing that may happen now is if
the government of the day says, well, we're going to
have an inquiry, but they would have to have a
bloody good reason to do that, and it simply doesn't exist.
My view is that, and as someone who's dealt in
with homicides for decades, it's a very strong case. It's
(42:47):
an exceptionally strong case, overwhelming evidence which is unable to
be rebutted. So at the end of the day, I mean,
maybe he may get an inquiry, but I'll be gobsmacked
if he did, because it would not be a rational decision.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
What lessons do you think investigators might have learned from
this case when investigation subsequent murder cases. Do you think
there was a lesson in investigators from Sef Gonzales.
Speaker 3 (43:12):
I mean they were two lessons.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
Tenacity, certainly not giving up because there were some hurdles
along the way and he was never going.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
To be cooperative or helpful or tell the truth in
any way.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
But the second thing is that you can't sort of
draw conclusions and reach a position early on. You must
be methodical. You must be thorough, absolutely thorough, and go
through all the possibilities other than the person you suspect
and rule them out one by one, which is what
had to happen here. The idea of a gang, the
(43:42):
idea of overseas people sending someone to kill them, the
idea of a racist attack, the idea of a home
invasion with robbery.
Speaker 3 (43:49):
As a motive.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
All of those had to be ruled out logically and
rationally with all the evidence available to make sure that
the only option, as Sherlock Ames used to say, when
you rule out all the other improbable things, whatever's left
has to be the answer. I mean that was a
torturous prasis and very long pricess. That's why it took
twelve months or so for police to charge him, but
(44:11):
they did everything right. They actually went through the steps,
ruled everything out so that when they went to court
they were on very solid ground.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
Just finally, I'd love to know how cases like the
Gonzales murders impacts you personally, because you see the worst
of the worst during your career. And when we find
out what Sef did in that time, his sister Claudine
died just after four pm, his mum more than an
hour later after she returned home from work, Dad sometime
after that. So this wasn't one fit of rage and passion.
(44:39):
This was over hours and in between he would have
stopped knowing what he's done and then done it again.
Speaker 4 (44:46):
And then there's evidence that he.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
Took a shower afterwards, got himself ready, went out to
dinner with a friend, explained away some other things about
why the phone was busy. Maybe it was them using
dial up internet when people couldn't contact.
Speaker 4 (44:58):
Them at home.
Speaker 1 (44:58):
Like he was really calm and collected, And that is
terrifying to know that someone can do those things and
then just walk back out into the world.
Speaker 4 (45:07):
How do you feel knowing people like that exist?
Speaker 2 (45:10):
Certainly, the impact on investigators is something that and as
time has gone by, I think we're much better at
recognizing that and doing something about it. One of the
things we brought in was mandatory sessions with the counseling.
At least I think my memory was either six months
or twelve months. They do see the worst of society,
human beings at their worst. They also see sometimes people
(45:34):
at their best, human beings at their best doing the
right thing, really taking risks to save others and so on.
But the important thing is to recognize that it's something
that has an impact on people, and therefore you must
make sure that you have a framework in place that
helps them deal with it adequately with professional help. I
spent three years as the chair of the Royal Commission
(45:55):
and the Defense and Military Suicide, as I said, and
we did that for the staff there. I made sure
that that was implemented and every two months all of
the staff had to have a session with the counselors,
and you had the same person all the way through
up to and including the three commissioners.
Speaker 3 (46:10):
We agreed that we would do that as well.
Speaker 2 (46:13):
So I guess while it's rough, and I must say
in my experience, particularly if I had to go to
a post mortem of a child.
Speaker 3 (46:20):
It affected me a lot more than an adult. And
I don't know why.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
I'm not a psychologist, but I mean I have kids.
Most of us do, and for some reason, post mortems
with children really affected me. But we recognized that and
we had things in place, such as regular account mandatory
counseling sessions that helped us to get through all of that,
and we did that also with the Royal Commission. But
(46:45):
the other thing that is very important is obviously the
feel in the office, if you like, of people being
there for each other, looking out for the person sitting
next to them, if they see signs of somebody who's struggling,
actually saying something and saying, look, do you want to
talk about it, Let's see what we can do to help,
and so on. And I know when the police and
it's a hard thing to say people have had mental
(47:07):
health issues because of all the badness that they've seen.
Even if they get better, it's still remembered by the colleagues.
This is a person who I struggled. Is not he
or she has once had a breakdown. It doesn't quite
go away. I don't know what the answer is to that,
but I think it's a societal problem. It's not just
in the uniform services. It's across society, and I hope
(47:28):
and pray that people take notice of some of the stuff.
They came out of the Royal Commission to try and
speak up more about this stuff and put their hand
up if they're not well and get help rather than
the alternative.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
In August two thousand and four, the Gonzales family home
at six Collins Street, North Ride was finally sold for
eight hundred thousand dollars, but that wouldn't be the end
of its controversial life. The agents who sold the property
to the Lynn family, devout Buddhists who'd originally held from
Taiwan and who'd put down an eighty thousand dollars deposit
to secure their new home, didn't tell them about.
Speaker 4 (48:04):
Its grizzly past.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
The Lynn family did not want to live in a
home where three people had been brutally murdered, saying it
would be haunted and would bring the misfortune. They asked
to pull out of the deal, but the agents refused
to refund their deposits, saying they had done nothing wrong.
Those agents would be the first under new South Wales
law to be fined for misleading behavior in promoting the
property for sale, and they had to pay out more
(48:28):
than twenty thousand dollars in penalties. The home did eventually
sell again in two thousand and five for seven hundred
and twenty thousand dollars to pat Olivio and her partner.
Speaker 4 (48:37):
Jeremy Mumford, who knew its dark story.
Speaker 1 (48:40):
They told Women's Day in twenty seventeen that they still
get really annoyed when people constantly ask them about the
house's history, saying that all happened before their time and
that they've had nothing but a good feeling living there
to this day, though, true crime fanatics will still drive
past the address just to see the exact place that
Sef Gonzalez decided to take the lives of his entire family.
(49:04):
Thanks to Nick for telling us his story. True Rome
Conversations is hosted by me Claire Murphy. The producer is
Tarlie Blackman, and we've had audio designed by Jacob Brown.
Thanks so much for listening. I'll be back next week
with another True Crime Conversation.
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