Confronting ‘the devil’: Springfield murderer denied parole after testimony from his family
In a tense May Massachusetts Parole Board hearing, a woman faced her biological father — the man she called "the devil" — and begged that he never be released.
Hearing her pain, the board denied him parole on Tuesday, citing his lack of remorse.
"... [Hector] Gonzalez does not present with appropriate insight or remorse with regard to his actions," the parole board wrote.
Gonzalez pleaded guilty to the second-degree murder of 30-year-old Sonia Torres on Nov. 16, 1987 in Hampden Superior Court. At 40 years old, he was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole. On that same date, Gonzalez pleaded guilty to three counts of rape of a child with force, three counts of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14, and one count of assault with intent to rape a child under 16 for the repeated abuse of Torres' three daughters.
He was sentenced to 12 to 15 years on each of the rape counts and sentenced to 8 to 10 years for the remaining counts. All sentences, including the life sentence, were ordered to run concurrently.
Gonzalez went in front of the parole board for the first time in 2001. He had additional hearings in 2006, 2011, 2016 and 2021. Each time he was denied.
At 78, Gonzalez asked for freedom again, stating he's a changed man. But family members feared for the worst if he was given parole.
"You took away so much from me. I have no father. I have no male guidance. It has been so hard. But I am strong," Sonia Cruz said on May 13, sitting next to her mother — one of the children Hector Gonzalez raped and impregnated before killing their mother.
"You never need to be free and you belong where you are," Gonzalez's daughter said.
Feb. 2, 1986
Gonzalez terrorized Torres and her three daughters for years.
They had all been living together in Springfield when Gonzalez began assaulting the oldest daughter when she was 7. The assaults continued for seven years, escalating to rape and to the other daughters, the parole board stated.
Gonzalez beat the girls when they resisted and threatened to kill their mother if they told anyone, the parole board stated.
On Feb. 2, 1986, Torres walked in on Gonzalez when he was in the process of sexually assaulting her oldest daughter.
Torres reported him to the police and sent her daughters to stay with a relative. Four days later, Torres and her 11-year-old daughter returned to the apartment to get some of their belongings, the parole board stated. But Gonzalez was hiding in the apartment with a kitchen knife.
He stabbed Torres multiple times in the chest and then sliced her daughter twice on her hands. Torres died from her injuries at Springfield Hospital a short time later.
The extent of the assaults were revealed after Torres' murder, including that Gonzalez had impregnated two of the girls, who subsequently gave birth and raised the children.
'I never had empathy'
Gonzalez has spent his time in prison taking classes to help him understand what led to his crime.
"One of the things, perhaps the most important thing, I learned was on the class of empathy. I never had empathy in my life towards anyone," he said through an interpreter at the parole board hearing.
He also had to confront his hatred towards women.
"I hated them and I wanted to hurt them," he said. "That was in the past. I look at women today that they have feelings just like me."
Gonzalez said he believes his hatred towards woman began with his own mother.
"I grew up with it. My father abused my family, especially my mom. I was about 10 years old and I remember thinking, 'Why doesn't my mother defend herself?' And my mom didn't defend herself. And that's where the resentment towards women started."
Gonzalez also spoke about being raped himself.
He has completed the Sex Offender Treatment Program (SOTP) among other programs. He said he avoids all violence in prison.
"Today, I hate violence," he said.
He also added that he doesn't care about parole but that he uses these hearings as a way to show his face and show responsibility for what he did.
But a parole board member reminded Gonzalez that every time he has a parole board hearing "it's like living that horrible experience over and over" for the victims and their family.
He said he knows it causes them pain but it's something he feels he has to do.
"All of them are talking about the past, what happened in the past and who I was in the past. And I can say that a person can change. I have changed," he said. "I don't care if I don't get paroled. I just want to say that I have changed my life and I will continue to change either inside where I am or outside. And if they want to believe that or not, it's up to them."
Still, the parole board was not convinced. Similarly, during previous parole board hearings, the board felt Gonzalez gave short answers and was void of emotion and remorse.
"... he still lacks empathy and continues to minimize the impact on his victims," the board wrote in 2021.
They also noted his "concerning history" that dated prior to his charges and that it took him three decades to complete the SOTP program.
The board also noted it was concerned about his parole plan.
If the parole board granted Gonzalez his freedom, he said he planned to live with his brother in Puerto Rico. But the board said that wasn't a good enough plan.
During the May hearing, parole board members encouraged Gonzalez to reach out to his case worker to help him find programs that could provide him with "a little bit of guidance and framework in the event that you do return to community at some point."
'We have no healing'
Angel Matos remembers returning to his aunt's apartment after her death to clean up the pools of blood, clumps of hair and lives Gonzalez destroyed.
"I'm asking that you take in consideration the pain and the suffering my family has endured because we have endured the most painful thing a family can endure," he told the parole board. "And coming here every time opens that wound again and it doesn't close. We have no healing because every time we come here, everything opens again."
But his pleas to the parole board were also about protecting another family. Matos said he believes if Gonzalez leaves prison, he will do the same thing to another family.
"Another family is going to go through what we are going through. Other children are going to go through it because the person that goes through what he did is not going to stop," Matos said. "So I'm asking you, begging you. Please, please don't let him out."
Multiple other families also spoke about their fears, not of him, but what he could do to other people.
"The lack of showing emotion is because the devil can't be disguised," one family member said. "You still have demons in you because you still haven't paid the consequences for the things that you have done from your past."
The family member believes Gonzalez has only admitted to what he has been caught doing and that there is more.
"You can take all your classes that you want, but you are sick and you will never change," she said.
Then, after 40 years, it was Cruz's turn to address the man who raped and impregnated her mother and killed her grandmother.
"My mother was a child when you took her innocence. And by the grace of God, she kept me even knowing that I'm a reminder of what she suffered. And for that I'm grateful," Cruz said. "But it doesn't mean that I had a good childhood. You set up so much damage and pain."
The oldest of eight children, Cruz said she felt she had to help parent her own mother as they "grew up together."
"And I will always be here to protect my mom," she said, which is why she spoke up at the May parole board hearing.
The Hampden County District Attorney's office also feared for the community if he was given parole.
"The fact that the petitioner has not engaged in violent conduct, sexual or otherwise, during his many years of incarceration speaks less to his lack of dangerousness and more to his lack of access to vulnerable women that he could victimize," said. "There is little reason to suppose that the petitioner, if granted parole, would not prey upon vulnerable women or girls in the community."
The district attorney's office said his plan after prison lacks substance, offering no concrete steps for how he plans to control his impulses.
"Because my question to Mr. Gonzalez, the question I think that he has to be able to answer effectively to this board, besides having a good plan once he gets out, is how," asked the Hampden County assistant district attorney. "How is he going to react to being out there in the world and not having control? ... And what will he do? What will he do when he feels like he's not in control?
Without an answer, the district attorney's office said: We know what he does.
Gonzalez will have the option to go in front of the parole board for the seventh time in four years. He will be 82 years old.
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