An illegal alien has killed two young boys and kidnapped their mother

Wayne Parry:

A family who took in an illegal immigrant as a boarder paid for it with the lives of their two children, whose skulls he bludgeoned with a hammer before kidnapping their mother, authorities said yesterday.

Shivering and soaking-wet after hiding in a drainage ditch near a Garden State Parkway rest area overnight, a coatless Richard Toledo, who also may be known as Richard Toledo Gonzalez, surrendered meekly to authorities yesterday morning after a Spanish-speaking state trooper convinced him to give up.

It was a far cry from the violence authorities say he perpetrated the night before at the home he shared with the woman who took him in and her sons, ages 14 and 7. The boys' bloodied, battered bodies were found in the basement Thursday night by their father after he got a call from his wife saying she had been kidnapped.

Wanda Gonzalez, 38, somehow managed to call her estranged husband, Carlos, on a cell phone sometime before 8 p.m. Thursday, saying she had been abducted and was being forced to withdraw money from a Commerce Bank automated teller machine, State Police Capt. Al Della Fave said.

Carlos Gonzalez then drove to their home in the Ocean Acres section of Stafford Township, where he called police at 8:54 p.m. to report his wife missing, Ocean County Prosecutor Thomas Kelaher said. A police officer responded, and was in the house when Carlos Gonzalez went to the basement, discovering the blood-soaked bodies of his sons Karlo, 14, and Zabdiel, 7.

The crime scene was so bloody that the first officers on the scene thought the children had been stabbed to death. Further investigation determined they had been beaten to death by a hammer, which authorities later recovered.

Their father collapsed upon seeing the bodies. He was taken to Southern Ocean County Hospital, where he was treated for shock and later released.

Meanwhile, about 25 minutes earlier, his wife, who had been bound with neckties and wire, broke free of her bonds and bolted from a white minivan in which Toledo, 24, who is not related to the victims' family, had been driving her north on the Parkway when he stopped at the Monmouth rest area in Wall Township to buy gasoline.

"She was in the van and broke loose from her bonds and was yelling and screaming for help," said John Langenbacher, the night manager of the Mobil station.

The suspect jumped out of the van holding a knife and yelled at her to get back in the vehicle, but she continued running away, taking refuge inside the service station office. Toledo then ran north on foot into a wooded area.

State police responded and set up a mile-wide perimeter around the rest area, periodically halting traffic on the Parkway. More than 100 officers, six K-9 teams and a helicopter joined the search.

But it was not until 3:25 a.m. when the suspect used his cell phone to dial 911 that authorities pinpointed his location.

"He said he was cold and wet and wanted to know what do to," Della Fave said.

A 911 operator transferred the call to the cell phone of a state police lieutenant on the scene, Anthony Sempkowski, who spoke to him in rudimentary Spanish for awhile. He turned the phone over to Trooper Eliecer Ayala, who had driven from the Bloomfield barracks in North Jersey to help with the search.

"He goes, 'I'm cold,"' Ayala said. "I said, 'Richard, where are you?' He said, 'I'm in the woods. I can see the gas station, I can see the highway, and I can see camiones,' which is the Mexican term for vehicles that are not cars.

"Then as soon as I started talking to him, the call dropped and his battery died," Ayala said.

Knowing the suspect was close by, Ayala got into his patrol car and broadcast an appeal over the vehicle's loudspeaker for Toledo to surrender.

He emerged from the woods east of the rest area, walked across the northbound lanes of the Parkway, and stepped over a guardrail into the parking lot of the rest area - directly in front of the car of a television reporter who was preparing for a broadcast.

Toledo was charged with two counts of murder, kidnapping and robbery, and ordered held on $2 million bail.

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