‘Racist message written in blood’

A racist hate message scrawled in blood has been found in the home of the Filipino family murdered inside their Sydney home, Australian media reported yesterday.

Citing police sources, local newspapers said the undisclosed message had been written in the blood of 46-year-old lawyer Teodoro Gonzales, his wife Mary Josephine Loiva and 18-year-old daughter Claudine, who were stabbed to death in an attack described by Australian police as "an outrage."

However, investigators are remaining tight-lipped about a possible motive for the slayings, and have declined to reveal the wording of the message left in the living room of the family’s two-story home in the middle-class suburb of North Ryde.

Some probers believe the hate message could be an attempt to throw authorities off the trail. Detectives have commissioned a task force, codenamed "Strike Force Tawas," to track down the killers.

Reports from the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper said the father was found stabbed to death in a hallway while his wife’s throat had been cut. Their daughter Claudine, a final-year high school student at a prestigious Catholic school, was found in an upstairs bedroom, her throat also cut.

The victims were discovered by the couple’s 20-year-old son, Sef, a law student from the University of New South Wales, when he returned home early Wednesday.

Detectives described the house as having been ransacked.

Frederick Gonzales, the younger brother of the murdered lawyer from their hometown of Baguio City, said the Australian police "must investigate this seriously."

A close friend of the family in Baguio City said that two weeks prior to the murder, Sef called relatives and told them an Australian teenager tired to grab his laptop computer on his way home.

The family said it was not clear whether this could have anything to do with the murders, but stressed all angles should be explored.

Fr. Kevin Dadswell of the St. Michael’s Catholic church in Blacktown suburb said the Gonzaleses were regular parishioners.

"They were a devout family," the priest told the Daily Telegraph newspaper. "We have a Mass at 8:30 a.m. every morning and Mr. Gonzales would come about three or four times a week on his way to work."

Gonzales was reportedly a successful solicitor specializing in immigration law.

Neighbors and friends described the attack as "evil."

"We are all shocked. Why would anyone want to do such a horrible thing to such nice people?" family friend Irene David said.

Monica Gonzales, a niece of the murdered lawyer, told the DFA yesterday that there had been no inkling of racial discrimination in the neighborhood during her visits there.

The suburb of North Ryde has been described as an area with one of the lowest crime rates in the province.

The murdered couple migrated to Australia following the Baguio killer earthquake in 1991. They came from prominent families in Baguio, with the husband having served as secretary of Mayor Francisco Paraan, who was officer-in-charge of the city after the EDSA revolution in February 1986.

Gonzalez was a graduate of the Baguio Colleges Foundation (BCF) college of law where he later taught, while his brother is the owner of the Forest Inn along Legarda Road. One of their sisters, lawyer Annie Gonzales-Tesoro, is regional director of the Securities and Exchange Commission in Baguio.

Lawyer Abelardo Estrada, president of the Baguio-Benguet chapter of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines, told The STAR that Gonzales was a "good and articulate professor."

Estrada took over Gonzales as criminal law professor following the latter’s migration to Australia.

The wife, formerly Loiva Claridades, is the older sister of Annie Rose Claridades-Paraan of Equitable Visa, a daughter-in-law of the former mayor. Paraan has taken a leave of absence from work to fly to Australia, according to Equitable employees in Baguio.

The couple once owned the Queen Victoria Hotel along Legarda Road, which was destroyed by the July 16 quake. — Pia Lee-Brago, Artemio Dumalo, Aurora Alambra