The Gonzalez family had worked hard to build a life they could be proud of.

They had big dreams for their children, and those dreams came with expectations.

Sure, their son wanted to be successful, admired, and independent, he just didn't want to work for it.

This is Monsters.

Before we begin, I just want to make sure you know that my other show, Sinister, is back up and there are three episodes a week.

They're dark stories from history, and if you like this show, you'll probably like that one.

Give it a shot.

There are links in the description.

Thanks.

Sef Gonzalez was born on September sixteenth, nineteen eighty in Baggio City, which is a cool mountain region in the north of the Philippines.

It sits at one thousand, five hundred and eleven meters or almost five thousand feet above sea level, which makes it the perfect escape from the oppressive summer heat for those living in Manila.

Beyond the spectacular mountain views, Baggio is known as a safe and family oriented area, which is popular with middle class families like those headed up by doctors, lawyers, and professionals.

Sef's parents perfectly fit that description.

Teddy was a qualified lawyer and businessman, and his wife, Loiva, was a diligent mother and housewife.

They had both worked their way up from modest beginnings to a comfortable and successful life built on hard work, faith, and family.

Teddy had a particularly strong and unrelenting work ethic right from the time he was a lost dude, and he was known as someone who was incredibly serious and focused.

He never joked or even laughed at jokes, and he wasn't the type to waste time on drinking or partying like other students.

Instead, he spent all his time studying so he could graduate top of his class.

But to Teddy's family, he couldn't have been more different than the professional persona he presented.

He had a great sense of humor, with a quick wit and a light hearted nature.

When he wasn't studying, he loved to spend time with his family, helped them out when they needed it, and celebrate their successes.

Teddy's parents couldn't afford to pay for his studies, so to make ends meet, he worked as a real estate agent.

He also started a taxi company with his brother, who was studying to become an engineer.

Two years into his law degree, Teddy met Mary Josephine Loiva Cocochi Claradades, who was known as Loiva to her friends and family.

Loiva was eighteen years old and in the first semester of a business degree.

Her parents came from a middle class background, with her father working as a dentist and her mother being a property developer.

When they decided to sell their family home, Teddy brought a potential buyer to view it.

During that visit, he laid eyes on Loiva for the first time.

After that, there was no one else.

They followed the traditional courting rules of the time by either having their dates at Loiva's family home or under the watchful eye of her mother as their chaperone.

Within three months, Teddy was down on one knee asking for Loiva to marry him.

They walked down the aisle a few weeks later in a simple ceremony, with their first kiss being at the altar.

Looiva was a shy young woman.

She didn't speak up and wasn't one to put herself at the center of attention.

As the oldest of six children, who was expected that she would help out around the house and take care of her younger siblings, but She spent the first nine years of her life living with her grandmother as the favorite grandchild.

Anything she wanted she got.

When her grandmother died, Looiva struggled to adjust to the busyness and chaos of the family home, and instead she preferred to spend time by herself.

But after marrying Teddy, Looiva found her voice.

Unlike many traditional relationships of the time, Teddy saw his wife as Zequel.

They made decisions together, and if she disagreed with something, they would talk it through to find a middle ground.

It seemed like marriage gave Lloyva permission to be her own person.

In nineteen eighty, Teddy passed the bar exam and officially began practicing law.

Just a few months earlier, Loyva had learned she was pregnant with their first child.

When Seph arrived, Teddy was overjoyed.

He loved being a father, and there was a special kind of pride that came with having a son as his firstborn.

Loiva was naturally nurturing and doted on her baby, taking care to shower him with the same love she had received from her grandmother.

Having a son inspired Teddy to work even harder.

He was determined to give his family the kind of lifestyle and privilege he never had growing up.

On top of his law practice, he poured his energy into formalizing his real estate business, as well as diversifying into a video rental shop and then a pharmacy.

Three years later, their family was completed with the arrival of their daughter, Claudine.

Unlike many Filipino families, Teddy and Loiva had always been clear that they would only have two children, despite birth control being avoided due to their strict Catholic beliefs.

They believed that it was essential to only procreate to the level they could financially support.

For them, two was that number, and they were committed to focusing their efforts on giving Seph and Claudine the best possible future.

While their equal partnership and decision to limit their family to just two children were considered relatively progressive in their Catholic community, that was pretty much where Teddy and Loiva's modern views stopped.

Their household operated under traditional Catholic roles and expectations.

Teddy, as the father, was the unquestioned head of the family and children were expected to follow his lead.

Teddy and Loiva were equally strict when it came to discipline.

The children were given specific time slots where they could play with their toys, and outside of that, they had prayers, chores, and study to attend to.

When Seph acted out, Teddy would hit him with a leather belt wrapped around his fist.

It was particularly bad if Teddy believed that his son had disrespected him or loiva or tarnished their family name.

Claudeine was spared the beatings, while Teddy was considered the disciplinarian.

Claudine and Seph would later agree that their mother was the one in charge of the house.

She would be the one to tell Teddy when the children acted out and when they needed to be reprimanded.

In line with both their faith and culture, the children had a clear role to play in their parents' lives.

Excel at school, be respectable, choose a stable and profitable professional career, get married, and start a family of their own.

The expectations were high that they would not only meet their parents' standards, but surpassed them in order to carry the family name and legacy through to the next generation.

By the late nineteen eighties, Teddy had been appointed to a senior position at the local council, which gave him the opportunity to move into government roles.

But despite his growing reputation and success, Teddy quickly discovered he wasn't cut out for politics.

He had a strong moral code, and after turning down one too many bribes and then receiving death threats for refusing to approve whatever it was the briber wanted, he quit for good.

In nineteen eighty eight, LoVa and Teddy traveled with the children to Sydney, Australia to visit Loiva's mother, sister, and brother, who had emigrated there the year before.

The extended family tried to convince the couple to make the move permanent by pointing out the opportunities Australia could offer the young family, but Teddy told them his roots were deeply tied to the Philippines, his work, his investments in the life he was building were all there.

When they returned home, Teddy poured even more energy into his business ventures.

He completed a forty room hotel building, which he saw as a symbol of how far he had come from his humble beginnings.

Alongside his law practice and other businesses, the hotel was another step toward the comfortable, secure life he had promised Loiva and the children.

But security and comfort wouldn't last.

In July of nineteen ninety, the city of Bagie was struck by an earthquake measuring seven point seven on the Richter scale in just forty five seconds.

At two down buildings that had stood for hundreds of years and those which had barely opened their doors, like Teddy and Loiva's hotel inside.

Nine year old Sef ran for the exit alongside everyone else who was inside the hotel that day, but while they ran for the front door, he became disoriented and ran towards the rear.

When he realized he was alone outside, he ran back inside the building to try and make his way to the front, but before he could cross the lobby, he was pinned to the ground by a falling beam, which trapped his leg.

Moments later, Teddy was by his side, wrangling the metal off his son's body.

Teddy carried Seph outside and they managed to make their way to a makeshift hospital a short distance from the hotel.

Sef's leg was a mangled mess, and Teddy and Loiva feared he would need an amputation, but Despite the crushing injury, he had no broken bones.

Still, his muscle was exposed and he was losing blood.

After life saving surgery and several more minor operations, including skin grafting, Cef was released from the hospital.

By then, Teddy had made a decision.

Now that the hotel was gone, there was nothing tying them to the Philippines.

Teddy had to pay for the demolition of what remained of his hotel, which was a crushing financial blow and wiped out years of hard work.

His dreams had been reduced to rubble, and he could no longer see a future for his family in his homeland.

He thought back to the visit to Australia and the reassurances from his extended family that life there could offer them safety, security and opportunities that had ended for him in the Philippines.

The earthquake also caused something else to shift for Teddy.

In Loiva, they believed it was an act of God with the purpose of giving them the opportunity to make a fresh start.

That was their chance to choose a path to righteousness.

If things had been strict for Claudine and Sef before, they were about to get even more harsh In nineteen ninety one, the family sold their belongings, packed up and moved to Australia for good.

By then, Seph was ten years old and Claudine was seven.

The family settled in Sydney, New South Wales and started rebuilding their lives.

Teddy began retraining as an immigration lawyer, while Loiva got a part time job at a bridal shop.

They lived in one half of a duplex owned by Loiva's mother, and the other half was home to Loiva's younger sister, Emily.

Family had always been at the center of their lives and that wasn't about to change just because they had moved countries.

Within weeks of arrival, Teddy and Loiva had joined the local Catholic church and enrolled the children into Catholic school.

Once Teddy had completed his studies, the family returned to the Philippines for six months so that they could apply for a skilled immigrant visa.

When that was approved, they relinquished their Filipino citizenship and returned to Australia in nineteen ninety three.

Within a few months, the couple had established their own legal practice and purchased a home of their own.

No matter the changes in their circumstances.

One thing that remained constant for Teddy, Loiva and the children was their faith.

Teddy attended Mass every morning on his way to work, and the children would often accompany Loiva on her frequent visits to the parish.

The family were known as extremely hard working and very private.

They were friendly and polite, but they didn't have a wide network of friends and instead preferred to spend their time with family.

As for the children, they seemed to thrive in Australia.

They both attended top private Catholic schools in Sydney and played with the local kids in their neighborhood.

Despite the cultural differences of their adopted country, inside the Gonzales household, traditional Filipino expectations still ruled.

Family and faith came first and hard work in educa vacation was non negotiable.

Sef in particular, as the oldest, was expected to aim for a professional career in law, medicine or another respected field that would make his parents proud.

Sef was a diligent student.

He was seen as bride and musically gifted, particularly with the guitar.

He was polite and respectful, and the type of student who didn't cause trouble right up until high school.

He was a straight a student and there was no doubt that he would achieve the goals his parents had set for him.

Claudine was also highly intelligent, but her grades never quite matched her brothers.

Where Seph was the bookworm, she preferred socializing and exploring creative hobbies.

There was still an expectation for her to do well at school and pursue a good education, but it came with the unspoken understanding that one day she would marry and have children of her own.

Teddy and LoVa wasted no time in celebrating their son's successes, particularly when he was named house captain in his final year of school.

In their culture, there was no prouder moment than seeing their child excel.

It was proof that their strict parenting methods and high expectations had paid off.

By the time Sef was sixteen and able to get his driver's license, the family had moved into a spacious home in the affluent North Ride area in Sydney.

It was around that time that friends began to notice a shift in Sef's behavior.

He became more image conscious and became deeply concerned about how he was perceived by others.

When he started dating, he was extremely picky about only choosing women who were tall and model level beautiful.

He even built a website dedicated to himself, which was apparently from the perspective of a girl who had a crush on him and thought he was the best thing to ever walk the earth.

While Sef told his parents he wanted to become a doctor, he told his mates that he aspired to live in south central Los Angeles and be involved in the gangster rap scene.

He joined an all male singing group and spent his money collecting R and B albums and going to concerts.

No one knew it yet, but Seth had begun living in a fantasy world where he was rich, powerful, and admired.

In reality, he was just a teenager living in Sydney, but his fantasy life began to take a toll on the real world he was living in.

Seth's sense of self importance became so consuming that his schoolwork began to suffer.

When his final year grades came in, they weren't high enough to give him entry into medical school.

Eventually, he confessed to his parents that he wanted to pursue a career in music, and that his singing group had been offered a recording contract.

When they refused to let him continue with the band, he threatened to end his own life and locked himself in the bathroom.

When Tedy broke the door down, he found Sef in the tub with superficial cuts to his wrists.

He was punished for his misbehavior by being grounded and not allowed to use his car for a week.

Eventually, Sef enrolled in a medical science degree, which might have enabled him to enter medical school at a later date, but he dropped out after a year.

Instead of telling his parents what had happened, he told them he wanted to become a lawyer like his father instead of a doctor.

They supported him to change courses, but he didn't tell them he hadn't made the cut for law school either.

Instead of enrolling into a law degree, he signed up for a bridging course with a couple of papers based around law subjects.

Sef was living a lie, and he was living it alone.

No one knew the truth about his failures or the lies he told to embellish his success.

He told women he lived in an apartment and he owned a dance party company and traveled frequently to the United States, as well as being on track to becoming a doctor.

In fact, he was living at home, had dropped out of university more than once, hadn't traveled outside of Australia since emigrating, and had no clear career prospects.

As the lies piled up, cracks began forming between Seph and his parents.

He resented them for their expectations and the pressure they put on him to achieve.

He blamed them for not allowing him to pursue music and for not letting him just be who he wanted to be.

His resentment turned to anger, and the anger turned to bitterness and hatred.

And maybe it would have stayed that way, maybe he would have grown out of it or found his own path.

But then two things happened which tipped the scales.

Claudine discovered that Seth had been falsifying his university results.

When she confronted him, he offered to do the same thing for her school results to make it look like she was performing better than she actually was.

She refused and instead told their parents what she had discovered.

That was pretty typical of Seph and Claudine's relationship.

They were constantly trying to one up each other in order to get into their parents good graces.

When that didn't work, they would tear each other down to make themselves look better.

When Teddy and Loiva learned that Seth had been skipping classes, missing exams, and failing to submit assignments, not to mention faking his results, they were devastated their perfect son was living a line and cut deep into the trust they had in him.

At the same time, Seph was wrestling with another private source of shame.

He had a lifelong problem with bed wedding that had followed him into adulthood at twenty years old.

He was humiliated by it, but refused any help, and he rejected any offers to see a psychologist.

Instead, he would put his soiled bedding into the washing machine and leave it for his mother to hang out each day like he couldn't face the shame of doing his own washing.

But the real tipping point came when his parents told him that if his grades didn't improve by the middle of the term, they would take away the one thing he cherished most, his car.

Sef wanted freedom in a way out from under his parents without his car he wouldn't have either.

He knew that the midterm results that were due to come through in less than a week wouldn't be any better than the last, so he decided on a way to achieve what he wanted in such a way that he would be set up for life.

On Tuesday, July tenth, two thousand and one, at eleven forty nine pm, emergency services operators in Sydney received a call from an extremely distressed man.

While ambulances were being dispatched to the scene, the man living across the road from the Gonzales household heard a knock on his front door.

He opened it to find Seph on his doorstep, screaming and crying.

He was dressed in jeans, hiking boots in a gray sweater.

Sef told the neighbor that his family had been attacked and he needed to come with him to go into the house.

The neighbor wasn't sure he wanted to get involved, but Sef seemed so inconsolable that he eventually agreed.

Together, they walked across the road towards the open garage door.

Before they made it up the driveway, Sef collapsed onto the ground, sobbing.

A few moments passed, and then suddenly he said, I know CPR, I know CPR, and ran inside the house.

As the neighbor followed him, he heard Sef cry daddy, daddy, daddy.

Through the garage, the neighbor entered into the foyer of the house.

Right in front of him, he saw Teddy lying face up on the floor.

Teddy wasn't moving and his white shirt was completely stained red.

In the center of his chest was a large hole which looked like a gunshot wound.

Blood had poured out of his chest and was contrasted against the white rug underneath his body.

Teddy was wearing a dark business suit with a white shirt, and his arms were at a strange angle pointing away from his torso.

His glasses were still on, and to the right of his body was an open breefcase with papers spilling out of it.

The neighbor stood rooted to the spot for a moment before watching run towards his father.

He straddled him across the waist like he was performing CPR.

Just next to Teddy's body was Sef's mobile phone.

The screen was still lit up from when he had used it to call emergency services.

Moments later, Sef jumped up and ran towards the lounge and dining room.

Next to the coffee table was Loiva's body.

She was wearing jeans and a dark sweater with black shoes.

She was lying on her side, which made the wounds to her back stand out.

Seph ran towards her in the same way he had flung himself at his father, yelling mummy, mummy.

He pulled Seph off of his mother's body and led him back towards the front door and out onto the street.

The neighbor knew the family owned two small and talkative dogs, but there was no sign or sound of them at the house.

He also knew that the Gonzalez extended family lived in a house across the road, and as he walked outside, he noticed that their lights weren't on.

He had a fleeting thought that the killer had targeted the Gonzalez family and there might still be more victims to find in the other home.

But the biggest thing that stood out was that he had watched Seph crying and sobbing, and yet not a single tear had fallen down his face.

When they were both outside the house.

The neighbor excused himself to make a phone call.

He didn't mention it was to the police.

Seven minutes after Sef called Triple ero, emergency services arrived at the Gonzalez home on Collin Street.

The first paramedics on the scene approached Sef, who was sitting on the ground in a hunched over position, which made them think he was injured.

When the medic asked him if the house was safe to enter, Seth stated that his family had been stabbed murdered and needed help inside.

He specified that his mother and father were downstairs and his sister was upstairs.

He also told the paramedic that he had disturbed the killers and chased them away from the house.

When police officers arrived a few minutes later, Seph repeated the story of chasing the offenders from his home.

Then he said he tried to give his mum and dad's CPR as he mimicked the hand compression movements he would have used.

Strangely, there was no blood on his hands or clothing.

Sef begged the officers to go inside the house, but before they did that, they needed to know more details about the offenders, how many there were, what they looked like what they were wearing and where they had gone.

But Sef didn't seem to be able to answer any of those questions.

He didn't know if there were wan er io or whether they had been in a car.

He thought they had left because he chased them, but he also thought they could be upstairs.

All he kept repeating was that the officers needed to go inside the house.

A few minutes after arriving, they did just that.

After walking past the two cars parked in the garage toward the front foyer of the home, they too were confronted with the unmoving body of Teddy splayed out on the white rug.

They immediately left the house with out entering.

One of the officers returned to Seph, who started telling him that he had been two years into his medical degree when he switched to law.

He sobbed as he said he wished he had stuck with medicine so he could have helped his parents and then out of nowhere, he told the officers about an incident which had occurred the night before.

Seth had been driving his parents home from dinner when another vehicle overtook them and the occupants yelled out their window bloody Asians.

The senior sergeant from Gladesville Station arrived at the Collins Street house sixteen minutes after Sef's phone call.

No one had entered the house yet, and it was still unclear whether the attacker or attackers were inside the house, so no one knew if it was safe to enter.

Seth was leaning against the garage wall when the detective arrived, and he asked the young man whether the attackers were still there.

Seth's answer was as vague as the other times he'd been asked that question.

He had chased the attackers away, but they also might still be inside.

The sergeant drew his service weapon as he walked into the foyer of the home.

After seeing the body on the floor and scanning the room for any threats, he checked Teddy for a pulse.

As he put his fingers on the man's neck.

The sergeant noted that he was already cold and rigor mortis had begun to set in.

Then he began scanning the ground floor of the home for any threats.

In the kitchen, he noticed a window above the sink was open.

In the laundry room, he heard a faint scuffling, and he hovered his finger over the trigger.

As he pulled open the door, a small white dog scuttled away into the corner.

In the living room, he found Loiva's body, and, once again, after scanning the room for threats, he felt for a pulse.

Like her husband, Loiva's body was already cold and stiff.

It was clear they had been dead for some time, far longer than the fifteen minutes which had passed since Stef's call to emergency services.

The last remaining unexplored section of the house was upstairs.

The sergeant headed up the wooden staircase to a brightly lit landing.

To the left was a bedroom, and in the doorway was another body.

Eighteen year old Claudine was in the fetal position, with her arms crossed over her chest.

On the wall behind her bed was an arc of blood leading from the floor to the middle of the wall.

It was clear she had been leaning against the wall when she was attacked and was since slumped over into the position she was now lying in.

She too, was called to the touch three victims.

Every member of the Gonzales family was now dead, with Seph being the only survivor.

After clearing the house and confirming there was no one else on site.

The sergeant called for backup and the scene investigation began.

On his first walk through the home, the sergeant had noticed that the drawers and all the bedrooms on the main floor were opened, with personal belongings strewn over the floor and beds.

The door to the master bedroom was locked, which was typical for Teddy and Loivo whenever they left the home.

From inside, officers could hear the faint whimpering of the family's second dog.

As the investigation into the triple homicide got underway, Ceph was still being attended to by paramedics in the garage of the home.

Over the next few hours, the sergeant spoke to him several times, asking general questions about the family and their movements.

That day, Seph repeated his story about the road rage incident and how he had tried to give his parents CPR.

Then Seph asked if he could tell the sergeant something in confidence.

He told the officer that he had a stash of porn on the computer in his bedroom.

The comment was so out of context that the sergeant couldn't think of what to say.

The three members of Sef's immediate family were dead, and all he could think about was hiding his porn.

At around midnight, the at least Canine Union arrived on the scene.

Conditions were perfect for tracking.

The neighborhood was quiet, there was no breeze, and no rain had fallen since the call had come in.

And yet the dogs were unable to pick up any sin from the Gonzales home the directions Sef pointed them in, or any direction at all.

He repeated to the officers that he had chased at least one person toward the main road, but then he said there could have been two or three attackers.

He just wasn't sure either way.

The dogs couldn't find a scent despite the many hours they spent trying.

As crime scene technicians began arriving at the house and lights were set up around the three bodies, sEH was transported to the local police station to give his formal statement.

Before leaving the scene, he was asked which family members the officers needed to contact to advise about the murders.

Sef gave them the details of his mother's cousin, Cecil.

Cecil said about calling everyone he could think of in Austria, Ellia and the Philippines, to let them know what he had heard so far.

Somehow he had gotten the message that there had been a shooting at the Gonzalez house and Claudeine had been taken to the hospital.

One of his first calls to relay that message was to Loiva's sister, Emily.

Emily lived just around the corner with her husband and eight year old son.

She was extremely close to the family, especially Claudeine, who she thought of as more of a friend than her niece.

She visited her sister nearly every day, and if they didn't see each other, they would speak on the phone.

All of that came to an end in the early hours of July eleventh, when she was abruptly woken up by her phone ringing.

It was Cecil telling her about the shooting and that Claudeine had been taken to the hospital.

He asked her to take a change of clothes to Seph, who had survived the shooting and was at the police station.

When Emily arrived at the station, she found Seph surrounded by their extended family and some of his closest friends.

As she walked in, she learned that Claudine had never been taken to the hospital.

She had been pronounced dead at the scene.

With that, the only flicker of hope that had remained for Emily was extinguished.

They were all dead, all except for Ceph.

In the station, Sef was hunched over with a blanket covering his shoulders.

Soft sobs were coming from his direction.

Emily immediately had the thought that the sounds weren't quite right.

When she sat next to him, she lifted Ceph's chin so their eyes could meet.

As she had suspected, there were no tears, his sobs were fake.

While everyone was shushing and comforting him, she had just one question on her mind.

Out loud, she asked, quote, I was at the house at six o'clock, why didn't you answer the door.

On the evening of July tenth, Emily had stopped by the Gonzalez house as she often did on her way home.

She had seen a figure flash past the window and as Sef's car parked in the driveway, but when she knocked, there was no answer.

She tried again, no answer, So she walked around the back of the house and tried the side door.

No answer again.

Suddenly she had a thought, I'll go home and try calling later on that instinct may well have saved her life.

Later that evening, she called the house phone, but there was a busy signal.

She tried again busy signal when she called Claudine's cell phone at eleven pm, it went straight to voicemail.

Six hours later she found out why.

For five hours after Emily arrived at the station, Seph was interviewed by homicide detectives.

His nine page statement covered his movements from eight am the day before.

According to Seph, the day started out like most others.

Teddy left for work before Seph woke up.

His mother usually left the house at the same time as he did in order to make his classes at McCrory University, where he was studying law.

He didn't see his sister that morning.

Claudine was in her last year of high school but was on school holiday at the time.

Sef told the officers that he returned home at twelve thirty for lunch before heading to his father's office to help him fix a computer problem.

He saw Claudine when he was at home, but they didn't speak.

He got to Teddy's office between one and two pm, but he couldn't find the computer issue.

Then all of a sudden work began pouring in, so he helped the secretary by answering phone calls.

Sef said, quote at my father's company, I spoke with my father and mother the night before.

I had sought permission from my mother not to eat dinner at home and had arranged to go out with Sam Daco.

He was his birthday the previous week, but I was sick and busy with university.

We postponed dinner until this date.

Sef wasn't sure what time he left his father's office, but it was definitely before the secretary finished, and that it was usually about four thirty to five pm.

He was on his way to meet his friend Sam when he got a text message to say there had been a change of plans and Sam had a basketball game to go to.

Sef called home to remind his mother that he was going out for dinner, but there was no answer.

He decided to drop home and tell his parents in person, as his mother was very strict about being home for dinner.

By then, it was around six pm before Sef got out of the car.

Sam called him and they agreed to meet at eight pm.

At Sam's house, Sef noticed that there was a light on in the kitchen and that one of his dogs was tight up, which confirmed nobody was home.

And yet he called the house on the phone again from the driveway, there was no answer.

He didn't get out of the car and instead drove off to visit one of his other friends who had recently moved into a new house, but he couldn't find the address, and by the time seven pm had come and gone, he decided to head directly to Sam's house instead.

At eight fifteen pm, the pair left Sam's house and drove into the city.

At nine pm, they sat down for dinner at Planet Hollywood.

At some point, Sam got a call from his sister, who was a good friend of Claudine.

She said she had been trying to get in touch with Seth's sister but hadn't got an answer.

Sef tried calling home again, but he got a busy tone, and he assumed somebody was using the internet.

Sam and Sef then played a game of pool and some video games.

At ten thirty pm, they drove home.

It was after eleven pm when Sef arrived back in the driveway of his family home.

The first thing he noticed was that the lights were on in the guest bedroom on the ground floor.

He also heard the dog's barking when he pulled into the car port, which was unusual as they usually recognized the sound of his car.

When he saw his dog tied up, he thought it was odd that nobody would have released him when he got home.

He then entered the house through the laundry room.

He took a few steps inside, which is where he saw his father lying in a pool of his own blood on the floor of the foyer.

Sef stated quote, there was blood everywhere and there were papers scattered around him.

My father was lying on his back and there was a lot of blood on his white shirt.

I rushed over and started calling out to my mom to come and help.

I was thinking that Mum was asleep as the lights upstairs were off.

I noticed holes in the chest and stomach area.

I thought these were shots.

I tried to cover up where it was bleeding, using only my hands.

I tried to lift his head to wake him up.

I was hugging him, and when I put him back down, I tried to give him CPR.

Sef used his cell phone to call for emergency services, and as he spoke, he walked towards the living room of the house where he found his mother's body.

Suddenly, he had a thought that he should try to find his sister, so he ran upstairs, still carrying the phone.

When he went into her room, he found her lying in the doorway in an awkward position with blood everywhere.

He grabbed her and tried to wake her up, but found blood gushing out from her side.

When he checked for a pulse, he couldn't tell if she was still alive or not, but he assumed she was.

His blood was still pouring from her wound.

That was when Sef said he heard a noise downstairs, which he assumed was either his mother or his father coming around.

He ran down the stairs, which is when he heard the side gate behind the car port closing.

He ran into the garage and pushed the remote control and then crawled under the door as it went up.

When he stood up outside, he noticed somebody running across the street and up the road.

He said, quote, I'm not sure if I saw two people or one person in a shadow.

I chased after them, shouting something.

I'm assuming it was a male person, as I recall short hair in the way the person ran was like a mail He chased them around the corner before realizing he had left his sister needing help.

Before going home, though, he ran to his neighbor's home and together they went back inside the house.

After recalling the events of the night before, Seth was asked if he knew anyone who might want to do harm to his family.

He couldn't think of anyone except for that same story of the road rage incident from the night prior to the murders, when the family had gone out for Claudine's birthday at the time.

He added that after the person had yelled out bloody Asians, the vehicle had followed them to a petrol station.

Seth had pulled in and the vehicle stopped behind them.

Seth explained, quote, my father and I were going to get out of the car and see what was going on, and my mother convinced us to stay in the car.

The four wheel drive then sped off.

There was nothing distinguishing about this car, but it may have been a Toyota like a land Cruiser.

That was the end of Sef's official statement.

His clothing and shoes were taken for forensic analysis, and his skin was tested for gunshot residue.

Sef's best mate, Sam, had come down to the station when he heard about what had happened.

He was in a state of shock as he offered his friend comfort.

Sam confirmed that he and Seth had spent time together the evening Prior CCTV footage also backed up Seph's timeline, at least as it related to going out for dinner and playing games, but Sam also specified that he had made their dinner plans the night before the murders on July ninth.

They had set the time for six pm until Sam remembered the basketball game, and then changed the time to eight pm.

When Sam got home from the basketball game, he rang Sef to confirm he was ready to go out, and Seth picked him up just as they agreed.

After Sef's interview, he was taken to his uncle's home to get some sleep.

The next morning, his uncle agreed to formally identify the victims at the morgue.

Seph also requested that he'd be able to see the bodies.

By that point.

The lead detective had to keep reminding himself to stay open minded about who the killer or killers could be.

Fellow officers, crime scene technicians, and even members of Sef's own family were quietly whispering that they thought he'd done it, that he'd been the one to kill his parents and sister.

It wasn't anything solid that seemed to have led to that conclusion, more just a combination of factors, like CEF'SOD behavior and the fact his grief seemed so surface level.

But the detective hesitated to make a judgment one way or the other.

So early in the game, Sef had given an incredibly detailed account of his movements, right down to specific phone calls and text messages he had sent throughout the day and into the night.

It seemed unlikely that anyone with a decent level of intelligence would be that precise if they were lying, and Seph was clearly smart.

Surely he knew that all of those things leave a footprint, and if his story didn't hold up, it wouldn't take long to figure that out.

The detective wanted to keep all lines of inquiry open, just in case CEF'SOD behavior was simply the result of a traumatized mind.

The amount of evidence to troll through seemed overwhelming.

Members of the unit worked eighteen hour days trying to piece it all together.

In the hopes that a clear suspect or suspects would emerge from the evidence right away.

Crime scene analysis theorized that the scene had been staged to look like an intruder had broken into the home to commit the murders.

The open window above the sink had been made to look as though was the entry point, but the fly screen had been cut neatly and placed against an outside wall.

While there were no marks or damage to the window frame to indicate it had been pride open, there were no footprints on the bench or any items that looked like they had been disturbed that would have been expected if someone had climbed in through the window.

A racist slur had been spray painted in blue paint on the wall in the family room, fuck off Asians.

It was all in capital letters, and underneath were smaller letters KKK.

Facing that wall was the glass sliding door leading outside from the laundry.

The door was opened, so anyone heading around the rear of the property would have been able to see the spray paint if they looked inside.

The evidence of a robbery was also slim Teddy had seven hundred dollars in his pocket and Looiva had three hundred dollars.

There was still jewelry on the body, as well as in other bedrooms of the house, and expensive electronic equipment throughout the home was untouched.

The task force almost immediately discarded any notion that the motive for the murders was robbery.

The technicians had also noticed that the blood around Teddy and Loiva's bodies was underneath their belongings.

Teddy's briefcase was on top of the blood, and so was Loiva's handbag.

That indicated the items had been placed there after the murders, rather than them having been discarded as they were attacked.

That was yet another sign that robbery was not the motive, and that the scene had likely been staged to look like it, albeit by someone who wasn't very skilled at covering their tracks or hadn't thought through the staging.

Inside the home, bloody footprints led from the body of Teddy to Loiva, back to Teddy, and then upstairs to Claudine.

The tread pattern of those prints matched a particular style in size of shoe.

Investigators discovered an empty shoe box in Sef's room for that exact style in size, which suggested he owned a pair but the shoes themselves were nowhere to be found.

Also missing were two knives from the block in the kitchen.

One was a large serrated knife and the other was a similar size but with a non serrated blade.

That was the first indication of what might have been the murder weapon or weapons.

As the crime scene investigation continued, the autopsies on all three victims were carried out.

For the first time, it was confirmed that none of the Gonzalez family members had been shot.

All three had been killed by stabbing, All of them had multiple wounds, and all of them had fought against their attacker.

Were attackers.

Teddy had been stabbed five times in the neck, with one going through his jugular vein and one through his carotid artery.

He had also been stabbed seven times in the chest, puncturing his lung and heart.

There were two more stab wounds in his back, one which had partially severed his spinal cord.

He had three stab wounds on his left arm and four cuts to his fingers, as well as four cuts to his right hand and fingers.

It's clear those cuts had come from him trying to stop the attacker.

His time of death was estimated between three pm and ten pm on July tenth.

Loiva had been cut on her face and there were multiple stab wounds on her neck, one of which had severed or trachea.

Her throat had been slid, and she had been stabbed in the chest, the abdomen, and her groin.

There were defensive cuts on her elbow and her fingers.

Her time of death was estimated between one pm and six pm on July tenth.

Teddy and Loiva's injuries were brutal, but they were all constrained to stabbing.

The same was not true for Claudine.

She had been stabbed and choked and beaten.

She had been hit at least six times on the head, causing a skull fracture and bruising on the scalp.

Her brain had bled as it hit the walls of her skull while she was beaten.

She also had stab wounds on her chest and abdomen which went through her liver, diaphragm, stomach, kidney, and aorda.

There was bruising around her neck and hemorrhaging in her eyes, which indicated she had been choked extensively.

Her neck also had five serious and six superficial stab wounds, as well as multiple cuts on her cheek, her ears, and the back of her neck.

Claudine had also fought for her life.

There were defensive wounds on her hands and wrists, and a deep cut to her thumb.

It was the medical examiner's opinion that she had been choked, then beaten, and then stabbed, and as suspected by those first on the scene, it appeared as though she had been sitting upright or leaning against the wall for several minutes before sliding on the wall, likely during the beating.

The medical examiner couldn't confirm exactly what weapon had been used to beat her, but it was likely cylindrical, like a small baseball bat.

Her time of death was similar to her mother, sometime between one pm and six pm.

Curiously, one of her sweaters had been laid over her body after her death.

The injuries on all three victims matched the size and shape of the non serrated knife, which was missing from the Gonzales family home.

The medical examiner determined that the victim's wounds indicated a frenzied attack.

It was overkill.

One or two injuries on each victim would have been enough to render them incapacitated, and yet the attacker had continued, and as we all know, with chogang, that's a highly personal method of murder.

The medical examiner's timeline gave the investigators a starting point.

Loiva and Teddy had gone to work that day, with Loiva leaving at around four point fifty pm.

She had dropped the office receptionist at the post office a few minutes later.

Claudeen had sent a text message to one of her friends at four h four pm asking about a party the weekend prior, and Teddy had made two phone calls from his cell phone to his home land line at six twenty pm and six twenty three pm as he drove home.

Those calls went unanswered.

That sequence indicated that Claudeene had been the first to die.

Next was Loiva after she arrived home around five thirty pm.

Tedy died almost immediately after arriving home at around seven pm, which told the officers that the killer or killers had waited nearly four hours to carry out their killing spree, hardly an indicator that the murders were part of a robbery gone wrong or a spur of the moment slaying with the timeline confirmed, detectives had to figure out once and for all whether Sef was involved.

When Sam was brought in for a second time, he confirmed his previous statement that he hadn't spoken to Seph to change the time of their meet up.

When they went out for dinner that night, he said Seth had barely touched his food.

When Sam asked him why he wasn't eating, he said his family had food poisoning the week before and he wasn't feeling one hundred percent.

Sam also remembered that when Seth drove him home that night, they passed by Collins Street and Seth looked up the road.

Sam asked him if he wanted to drop into his house on the way, but he said no.

Sam also made an interesting comment about Seth's character.

He said, quote, I would say that Seth thinks he can stand up for himself.

I say that because he bragged to me in the past how people have stopped in a similar manner to the road rage incident he described to me.

On these occasions, Seth has told me he had gotten out of his car and taken a baseball bat out of the boot to scare them off.

Sam also told them something else.

Sef had kept in touch after the murders of his parents and sister, and he repeated the same comments several times that Teddy's brother Freddie he probably wanted to get his hands on his parents' millions.

The comment about the baseball bat indicated that Sef potentially had the propensity for violence.

Detectives also wondered if the baseball bat might have been what he used to be Claudine to death.

And then there was the money.

He was the first mention of a potential motive for the murder.

While those conversations swirled, officers reviewed the Triple ero call transcript.

When Seth had called emergency services, he said his family had been killed, but he also said he couldn't find his sister, and yet when officers arrived on the scene, he said he had only found his father's body when he called for help.

There was also the clothing that Sef was wearing that night.

It only had minimal blood on it, with a couple of spots on the back of the sleeve of his sweater, a few spots on the right leg of his jeans, and some spots on top of his boots.

There was no blood on the souls.

Further analysis found a spot of blue paint on one of the lower sleeves of Seth's sweater.

The color matched the graffiti found on the wall inside the Gonzales home.

And yet Seth claimed he had tried to give CPR to his mother and his father, which would have likely resulted in some blood transferring from their bodies onto his clothing.

But the most damning evidence came from Sef's own phone.

There was no record of the phone calls he claimed to have made on the night of the murder, none to or from Sam at the time he apparently had to go to the basketball game, and none to his home phone or his mother's mobile phone.

CEF's alibi had unraveled, and it was only day two of the investigation, but there was a long way to go yet.

When the Task Force made a public appeal for information about the murders, they asked Seth's uncle to make a statement in the media, but Sef told them he wanted to be the one to do it.

He promised a reward of one hundred thousand dollars for any information leading to an arrest.

A few days after the public appeal, police asked Seth to take part in a video reconstruction of what he had done after finding the bodies of his family.

He agreed and calmly walked to the officers through what he said had happened that night.

He showed them how he'd entered the house, found his father's body, and then called for an ambulance.

He described what he had seen and even demonstrate how he had hugged his parents' bodies in grief.

By then, the lead investigator had all but given up on his determination to keep an open mind about who the killer might be.

He was pretty sure he was looking right at him.

The key witness in the case against sEH was his own aunt.

During her initial police interview, she kept her answers short and didn't let on any information other than what they had asked her directly.

She told them she had visited the house on the way home, but she didn't go into detail about what she had seen.

It wasn't that she didn't want to share, it was that she was so convinced that Seth was the killer that she was worried he would come after her if the police told him she suspected he was the killer.

But Emily had made a promise.

On the same night she had been told about the murder, she had lit candles next to a photo of her sister, Teddy and Claudine and promised them she would do whatever it took to bring their killer or killers to justice, even if it meant risking her own life.

When she made that promise, she didn't know that would mean indicting her own nephew for murder.

Ten days after the murders, Teddy, Loiva, and Claudine were farewelled in an emotional funeral service attended by three hundred loved ones from around the world.

Despite the horrific injuries they had suffered, their caskets were open for viewing.

Sef spent five minutes at every coffin, holding his family member's hand and bowing his head as he whispered a prayer.

Emily noticed that his eyes were dry, once again in line with the family's Catholic beliefs.

The plan was for all three to be buried, but Sef insisted that Teddy had wanted to be cremated.

It was only when a family member pointed out that, because of the on going police investigation, burial was the better option that Sef reluctantly agreed, but Sef would not negotiate on being the only one allowed to read his father's eulogy.

He also performed the Mariah Careyon Boys to Men hit song One Sweet Day during the service.

Sef had also insisted that a special area be set up inside the church for the media to report on the funeral.

As the investigation stretched on, Cef told officers he feared for his life and he worried the killers might come after him.

Next, he claimed he couldn't meet, couldn't sleep, and that he was constantly on edge.

To ease his fears, police put him up in a hotel.

They didn't tell him they had secretly bugged the room and put him under surveillance.

One evening during his stay, Seth had arranged to meet at a friend's house, but he never showed up.

The friend was concerned and called his family, who were worried something had happened to him.

When Seth finally returned, he said he had just needed a walk to clear his head.

In fact, he had gone to a steakhouse and treated himself to a huge meal alone, probably so no one else would find out.

His appetite was perfectly normal.

By then, investigators had all but ruled out any other suspects, including an ex boyfriend of Claudine's and a disgruntled ex client of Teddy's law firm.

That left just one suspect remaining, Ceph.

According to international research, there are six factors that indicate a killing has been committed by someone within the victim's family.

The killer will use a weapon from the scene and use that weapon to attack the victims on the head or face.

The body is usually always left at the place of death, which is more often than not the family home, and a blunt weapon will often be involved.

The Gonzales family slangs met all of those indicators.

Seph was brought back in for another interview three weeks after the murders.

He was confronted with the evidence so far, including the missing text messages and phone calls he claimed to have sent or received on the night of the murders.

He put that down to delays between phone networks and not having emptied out his text messages so there was a backlog on messages arriving.

He was also asked about the baseball bat Sam mentioned in his car.

He dodged that question by saying, at first he wasn't sure he had ever owned a baseball bat, then saying he might have, but it also might have been a cricket bat, and then that yeah, it was a baseball bat, but he hadn't seen it since the family had moved house.

When he was asked about the inconsistencies in the Triple ero call, when he said his family had been shot when he apparently had only found the body of his father, he blamed it on the stress and trauma.

He claimed that he was rambling and found the body of his mother during the time he was on the call.

Seph also denied ever having seen the racist slur painted on the wall of his family home.

When he was shown evidence of the matching blue paint which was found on his sweater, he claimed it had come from some decorative blue wood chips in the garden of the house.

He also had an explanation for the shoe box found in his room, which matched the bloody footprints left on the carpet.

He claimed his cousin had left them there during a previous trip, but he had no explanation for where the shoes themselves were.

Seph was also asked about Internet search history from both the Gonzalez family computer and his own device, the same one Cephet told officers contained his porn stash.

There were searches for poisonous plants and chemicals and how to mask the taste of those poisons, as well as simply quote how to kill.

There was also an order for a supply of poisonous seeds, which had been organized using a generic email address.

Sef blamed all of that on his father.

He refused to acknowledge that about of extreme food poisoning his mother had suffered a week before the murders had anything to do poisonous seeds.

A few months after the interview, the issue of the Gonzalez family money came up again.

Seth had been emailing his family members in the Philippines to determine the transfer of nearly two hundred thousand dollars in money collected from Teddy's rental properties.

The family members had contacted the detectives investigating the murders to ask if they should do as Seth had asked.

They were advised not to.

By then, it had become clear that Sef was set to inherit his parents entire estate, which was worth about five million dollars.

Or ten million dollars in today's money.

At the time of the murders, Seth had approximately five hundred dollars in his account, but in the months after the murders he received several substantial deposits totaling nearly sixty thousand dollars.

He didn't have access to his parents account, but he was getting money from somewhere.

It turned out he had taken it upon himself to sell his parents' cars, their jewelry, collecttion of Rolex watches, and other personal items belonging to his family.

Right before Christmas, Seth put a down payment on a one hundred and seventy thousand dollars Lexus Sedan with five thousand dollars worth of accessaries.

As the pressure on the detectives to make an arrest, grew, so did sefsod behavior.

He repeated his claims that his uncle Freddie had committed the murders to get access to his parents' cash, and he dropped the name of a well known Filipino businessman who said he had a grudge against his father.

He also came up with a second alibi to replace his claims that he had been lost when he went to visit his friend at his new house before going out to dinner with Sam.

He now claimed that he had parked his car at the house and then walked down the road to catch a cab to a brothel.

That would have explained why Emily had seen his car in the driveway when she dropped by that afternoon.

The only problem was the brothel hadn't even been open at the time of the murders.

Also claimed to have a statement from a taxi driver who dropped him off, but officers listening in on his tapped phone had already heard him discussing paying a random taxi driver who didn't speak much English to backdate a statement about picking him up and dropping him off that night.

Ceph was becoming desperate in his attempt to prove that he was not guilty.

In March of two thousand and two, he invited several media companies to walk through the Collins Street home in an emotional appeal for information about the murders.

But there was a catch.

He wanted to be paid for the interview.

The news outlets declined his offer.

Then he staged an abduction, and when he reappeared, he told officers that he had received threatening emails telling him to confess or the kidnappers would kill his other family members.

Despite all that behavior, it took until nearly one year after the murders for Sef to be formally charged with three counts of murder.

A year later, his bail application was rejected.

In the meantime, it was revealed in the media that Seth had also been charged with threatening product contamination.

Just a month before the murders, he had sent an anonymous letter to a food manufacturer to say poison had been added to their supply chain and there was no way to stop it.

He also sent letters to various government departments responsible for food safety.

When Sef was arrested for murder, his fingerprints came up as a match for those found on the letters.

Meanwhile, Seth had no money to pay for his own defense.

He made an application through the courts to have his parents estate cover his legal fees, but because he was indicted for their murders, he legally didn't have access to any of his inheritance.

Ultimately, a judge ruled that Sef could not use money from the estate to pay for his defense.

On April fifth, two thousand and four, Seth's trial finally got underway, he pleaded not guilty to all three charges of murder.

For four months, the jury heard from countless witnesses, experts, and family members.

All of it pointed to one conclusion.

Seth's story of stumbling in after his family's murders simply didn't add up.

The forensic evidence, the financial motive, the lies he had told in his own strange behavior in the days and months following the murders painted a picture of a son who had brutally killed his family and then tried to cover it up, all because he wanted freedom from his parents' control and the financial security that would come from inheriting everything they had worked for.

Before the verdict came in, Seth sent a letter to the investigator in charge of the task force.

He had been sending letters from Jaelomo since the day he was first locked up.

They went to the media, family members, detectives, and witnesses this time.

The letter read quote, I know what you must think of me, so I won't continue to plead my innocence to you.

I know that you've made up your mind about me, and I don't blame you.

It was my shortcomings, immaturity and weakness as a young person, which you were able to point out that convicted me.

Maybe I do deserve all of this, because although I'm no murderer, I should have been a better person through all of this experience, information has come to light which may provide all of us with answers.

Since no one would believe me, I was hoping to first gain some credibility, then pursue this after I was acquitted.

I may never get that chance.

I believe that deep within each person is goodness, so I write this with faith and hope.

We both know that despite the verdicts, there are many questions left unanswered.

Again, I don't blame you if you just wish to throw away the key and forget about me, But I know that many years down the track, those unanswered questions will continue to haunt any good police officer.

It's unknown what information supposedly came to light, as there's never been any evidence that has pointed to any other scenario outside of Seph murdering his parents and his sister.

Those unanswered questions, Seph refers to seem to only exist in his mind as a means of explaining his innocence to everybody else There are no unanswered questions.

The timeline and evidence all clearly lead to seth.

On May twentieth, two thousand and four, Seph was found guilty of all four charges, three of murder and one for threatening product contamination.

He was sentenced to three concurrent life sentences without parole.

In the judge's remarks, he said, quote, I consider that the murders show features a very great heinousness, and that there are no facts mitigating the objective seriousness of the murders, and hence the murders fall within the worst category of cases of murder at common law.

Seph was able to make a comment in the court.

He used the opportunity to paint himself as a victim and that he had been put on trial for being a bad person, not a murderer.

Boo woo.

Years later, Sef appealed his conviction on the grounds that the statement he gave on the night of the murders was inadmissible as he hadn't been cautioned, which is the equivalent of being read as miranda rights.

That appeal was dismissed in twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, and twenty twenty one.

He attempted to have his conviction overturned again.

All three attempts were dismissed.

To date, the murder weapon has never been found, nor have the shoes from the shoe box found in Ceph's room.

In two thousand and four, the Collins Street home was sold to a couple from Taiwan who were not informed about its dark history.

They found out what had happened there from the newspaper and they tried to get out of the purchase.

However, the real estate agents who facilitated the sale refused, but after significant public pressure, the couple were refunded their deposit.

As a result of this case, the law was changed to make it mandatory for real estate agents to disclose anything that might have an impact on the value of property, including crimes or deaths which occurred there.

Sef Gonzalez spent years inventing a life he wished he had, only to become the monster that ended the one he did.

If you're the victim of domestic abuse, please reach out to someone for help.

Please talk to your local shelter, call the National Domestic Abuse Hotline at one eight hundred seven nine nine safe.

That's one eight hundred seven nine nine seven two three three, or you can go to the hotline dot org to chat with someone online.

If you're having feelings of harming yourself or someone else, or even just need someone to talk to, please contact your local mental health facility call nine one one, or call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline by simply dialing nine eight eight in the United States.

They're available twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, and we'll talk to you about any mental health issue you might be facing.

If you're a member of the LGBTQ plus community and suffering from discrimination, depression, or are in need of any support, please contact the lgb bt National Hotline at one eight eight eight eight four three four five six four, or go to lgbt hootline dot org.

Thanks so much for letting me tell you this story.

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