Slain lawyer’s son: I’ve lost 3 corners of my world

SYDNEY, Australia – The three corners of his world are now gone.

The lone surviving member of a Filipino family murdered in a north Sydney suburb earlier this week soldiered through his grief yesterday after losing his parents and younger sister.

Sef Gonzales, 20, returned to the family’s home in the leafy middle class suburb of North Ryde before midnight Tuesday to discover his 46-year-old father Teddy stabbed to death in a hallway.

His mother Mary Josephine Loiva, 43, was found in a living room of the two-story home and his 18-year-old sister Claudine in an upstairs bedroom with their throats cut.

"It is difficult to explain the love and ties in my family but if you were to picture the four corners of the world, in my world we were the four," he told reporters at a Sydney police station.

"We had so many plans together and we had just started to bring our dreams to life.

Unfortunately, on Tuesday night they were all taken away. Three corners of my world are now gone," the law student said.

Gonzales said he was de-vastated by the brutal slayings and appealed for help in finding the killers of his parents and sister.

He was treated in hospital for shock after alerting neighbors about the murders.

Sources close to the police investigation say a racial slur was daubed on a wall close to one of the bodies but detectives say they still have not established a motive for the killings.

The family moved to Sydney in 1991 after an earthquake devastated Baguio City where they are from.

Detective Inspector Geoff Leonard confirmed yesterday that the Gonzales couple and daughter were stabbed to death. Unconfirmed reports have said the two women had their throats slit.

Gonzales, who is in the custody of his maternal grandmother, a Claridades, living across the road, appeared close to tears as he made a public plea for help to find the killer.

He said he would name his first son after his father Ted, who bought their home in 1999 so that the family could be near Mrs. Claridades.

The survivor also asked the media to respect the family’s privacy and leave them in peace as they mourn.

"I would like to ask the media to please respect our privacy and leave us in peace as we mourn. We would like to extend this wish for the privacy of the funeral," Sef said in a statement during the public appeal yesterday at the North South Wales police headquarters.

Leonard would not comment on whether Gonzales was being treated as a suspect but said he had been cooperating with police. The law student was assisting the police investigation as best he could, he added.

"Young Sef and his family have cooperated with the investigators at this stage and we’re satisfied with the explanation so far," the inspector said. "We’re continuing our inquiries. We’re keeping an open mind in relation to various lines of inquiry."

Detectives said they had commissioned a task force to track down the killers. They believe Sef’s father may have disturbed whoever killed his wife and daughter, before he himself was murdered.

"It’s still not clear, the motive for this terrible crime," Leonard said. "Yes, it is frustrating."

Strike Force Tawas, former Thursday, believes that the wife and daughter were already dead by the time Mr. Gonzales returned from work in the early evening.

The Gonzaleses had lunch together in Blacktown on the day of their death. Every Tuesday, the couple ate at the Royal Spice 8 Thai restaurant and takeaway in the Blacktown mall. The proprietor, Paul Hengpoonthana, said Mrs. Gonzales "was very beautiful. You noticed her."

No one who knew the Gonzaleses could accept the fate that befell such a gentle, Christian family.

"They were just so much in love it was incredible to see," said Pat Carne, who has a business next door to the Blacktown law office the murdered couple had run together for the past six years.

"They walked hand-in-hand everywhere they went. Even if they were just going downstairs to the car park. Whenever you saw them, they were holding hands, smiling at each other. Their love was so obvious it struck you as something wonderful," Carne said.

"Ted said to me, ‘I’m the luckiest man in the world. I’ve got a lovely wife and a lovely family. What more could I want?’ I remember the day he told me that," she said.

At 9 a.m. Thursday, clients began to gather in confusion on the first floor of a two-story office block in Kildaire Road, Blacktown, wondering why the door to unit 31 was still locked.

The shingle said the office opened at that time, but the Gonzaleses were always there early, with a smile on their faces.

A woman neighbor in North Ryde said the only inkling that something was wrong at the Gonzales house was the barking of one of Mrs. Gonzales’ chihuahua dogs, one of a number which she bred.

Another neighbor, who did not want to give his name, said that Mrs. Gonzales had invited him into her home after it was built.

"It was like walking into a church," he said. "In one room upstairs they had an altar." – Pia Lee-Brago