Posted on 01/12/2011 4:30:17 PM PST by Coleus
The boyfriend of Francisco R. Gonzalez Fuentes, whose butchered body parts were found stuffed in garbage bags in two locations in Cliffside Park, and another man were charged with his murder late Tuesday, authorities said. Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli said Gonzalez’s live-in boyfriend, Pedro Garcia, 33, stabbed and then dismembered him with a “household knife” after a party at their apartment on Saturday night.
“It was a domestic argument that took place between Pedro and Francisco,” Molinelli said. He declined to detail the nature of the dispute. The third man, Wilfredo Sanchez, 34, also of Cliffside Park, witnessed the attack and then helped Garcia dismember Gonzalez’s body, Molinelli said. Between about 1 and 5 a.m. on Sunday, the men stuffed the head and torso into one garbage bag and the remaining body parts into two other bags, leaving the bags at three locations near the couple’s Palisade Avenue apartment.
Molinelli said authorities were still seeking to recover a bag containing Gonzalez’s hands and other remains that apparently was picked up by sanitation workers. Even before the arrest on Tuesday, Gonzalez’s brothers and sisters had pegged Garcia as the prime suspect and recoiled at the cruelty of the Salvadoran immigrant’s killing. “In El Salvador, where there is so much violence, I’ve never heard of a death like this one,’’ said Gonzalez’s older brother, Fermin Gonzalez. “This is a horror. This has no name.”
The arrests capped a manhunt that began soon after police dogs found human remains on Monday afternoon. Gonzalez, who was 46, had been reported missing by his family after he failed to show up for work as a chef at the Club House Café on Sunday. Molinelli said Garcia was arrested without incident in North Bergen on Tuesday afternoon. Sanchez was taken into custody and interviewed on Monday evening. Garcia and Sanchez each were charged with murder, possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose, unlawful possession of a weapon, desecration of human remains and hindering apprehension. State Superior Court Judge Liliana S. DeAvila-Silebi set bail for Garcia and Sanchez at $2 million each with no 10 percent option. Both men were sent to the Bergen County Jail in Hackensack and are scheduled to appear in court on Thursday at 1:30 p.m.
Family and neighbors said Garcia and Gonzalez had a volatile relationship, routinely engaging in arguments that could be easily overheard through the windows. The couple lived on the first floor of a yellow painted brick building on Palisade Avenue. “When Francisco didn’t give him money, he would get mad,” said Esperanza Serrano, a neighbor. Serrano said Gonzalez told her he met Garcia when he was working as a deliveryman for a local pizzeria several years ago. The two men were an odd couple: Gonzalez was very upfront about his sexuality while Garcia did not seem as comfortable identifying himself as gay, friends and relatives of both men said.
Gonzalez’s family said he immigrated to the United States 20 years ago carrying only 300 colons, the currency in El Salvador at the time, and a phone number and address for one of his older brothers who lived in New Jersey. His sister, Dora said he and Garcia first lived together in an apartment on Anderson Avenue, before moving to Palisade Avenue more than a year and a half ago. Dora Gonzalez said she would visit her brother often, and witnessed several arguments between Gonzalez and Garcia. She said Garcia depended on her brother to pay for rent and food. “I even told him several times that if you don’t love my brother, leave him,’’ she recalled. “He didn’t love him. He just stayed with him so he could have a place to live and money.”
His family questioned authorities’ decision to release Garcia after questioning him about Gonzalez’s disappearance on Monday, before his body was found. Gonzalez’s sister, Dora, said she was at her brother’s apartment when police questioned Garcia. Dora Gonzalez and her husband Pedro Osario said there was blood in the apartment and that knives, pillows and blankets were missing. “The moment Francisco went missing and there was blood in the apartment, they should have looked at him as the prime suspect,” Osario said. “How could they let him go?” Garcia seemed to lead a rootless life in recent years, friends and family said. “He lived in his own world,'” said his sister, Norma Garcia, in a phone interview. He came to America in the mid-90s and worked at various restaurant jobs, but never for very long, according to Maria Castro, the mother of his 6-year-old child.
Garcia’s outlook seemed to darken after his older brother, Wilfredo Garcia, was gunned down in front of his Nutley home in 2005, Castro said. “He always [would] drink,” she said of her then-boyfriend’s behavior before the shooting. “After that it got worse and worse and worse.” Castro said she never knew Garcia to be violent. “He never touched me,” she said. “He never even screamed at me.” Garcia has other brothers and sisters in the area, including a brother who lives in Fairview, with whom he had periodic disputes. Garcia and Castro stopped living together when she was six months pregnant, and after that he had no fixed address that she knew of. She believed he had been in jail in Hudson and Bergen counties and at an immigration facility in Elizabeth within the last six months after getting picked up on a warrant in Jersey City.
Castro said police came to two bars that her father owned, in Fairview and Union City, asking about Garcia on Monday. She said had not seen him since her son’s birthday in September. Castro said Garcia never told her that he was in a relationship with a man, though she knew he was. Molinelli said the incident was not being investigated as a hate crime. Fermin Gonzalez said that he would like to take his brother’s remains to El Salvador. “Before we take my brother and bury him, we want the person who did this to be caught and for justice to be served,’’ he said.
Ain’t multiculturalism grand?
Awww... I bet these two men made a nice couple.
How did things go so awry?
Homosexuality isn’t really the issue in this particular case.
If Garcia had been living with an elderly woman, and pretending to have a ‘partnership’ with her, I have no doubt he would carve her up for arguing with him, just like he did to this man.
More gay/illegal alien crime. This is far more common in the gay community than the press reports.
“he immigrated to the United States 20 years ago carrying only 300 colons”
Then he got busy to get many more.
Anyways I don’t believe this story. Gays would never do something so evil.
The perverts are flocking to the Sodomite cities of this morally deteriorating nation.
Did anyone check to see if any of these foreigners are legally residing here?
Where homosexuality is concerned you are, by definition, dealing with mental and emotional disorders. So, homosexuality may not be "the issue", but there is certainly a connection.
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