by JADE MINGUS / KVUE NEWS and photojouranlist ERIN COKER
kvue.com
Posted on April 25, 2012 at 5:48 PM
AUSTIN -- The family of a missing Austin mother is fighting for custody of her daughter. Wednesday morning a court hearing grew tense and emotional during the custody battle for four-year-old Layla, the daughter of Julie Ann Gonzalez.
Gonzalez, 21, vanished around March 26, 2010, from South Austin. Her daughter Layla was just two years old at the time. Layla has since been living with Gonzalez's estranged husband, George De La Cruz.
De La Cruz is a person of interest in Gonzalez's missing persons case. Austin police detectives have questioned him, but he has not been charged. The family of Julie Ann Gonzalez believe De La Cruz has information about her disappearance.
"This really scares me because I don't know what this man is capable of," said Layla's grandmother Sandra Soto. "We still have zero answers. We know nothing."
The judge granted Soto visits twice a month with her granddaughter Layla.
The judge warned Soto to remove Facebook posts that the judge said were accusatory toward De La Cruz. The judge said they caused tension between the families and ultimately hurt Layla.
"This is a very young child, and this child needs to be protected from any type of behavior," said De La Cruz's attorney Bret Doyal. "He takes care of his child. I've witnessed him. It's a very loving relationship between father and daughter."
Austin Police Department detectives say this remains an open investigation. No one has been arrested in Gonzalez's disappearance.
The man mediating a custody battle between a New Zealand woman and her
Algerian husband over their three children hopes to have the whole family back
in New Zealand within a fortnight.
Following a seven-month dispute over the children, he said both parents
wanted a resolution and they were "considering leaving Algeria with the
children and returning to New Zealand or Australia".
"I'm hoping to get Mihi and Mohamed and the kids home, hopefully
in a week to a fortnight," said the London-based mediator and family
spokesman, who did not wish to be named.
However, he said he needed more support from the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs in order to be able to carry out the negotiation, "but to date it
hasn't been forthcoming".
Before they travelled to Algeria last August, Northland woman Mihi
Puriri, 33, and her husband Mohamed Azzaoui, a former boxing champion, had a
"perfect marriage".
It was Ms Puriri's seventh trip to her husband's home country "and
that's why she was so comfortable going this time", he said.
However, this time was different.
"She loves for life, she took those marriage vows seriously. She
wears her heart on her sleeve. We're talking a very, very smart young woman
here. The only thing we could accuse her of is being over-trusting."
The couple and their three children travelled to Mr Azzaoui's native
Algeria because she thought his father was gravely ill.
She alleges that soon after they arrived Mr Azzaoui took the family passports
and then held their daughters Iman, 5, Assiya, 2, and son Zakaria, 11 months,
captive in the family home in Mostaganem.
"Upon arrival Mihi realised that the paternal grandfather was not
ill.
"It does appear that Mohamed did have this planned for some time,
it certainly wasn't a spur of the moment thing. I would say that my knowledge
of it is that he had this planned for some weeks ..."
The family shared the two-bedroom apartment with up to 14 Azzaoui
family members, showered once a week at most and there was little entertainment
for the children, said the spokesman.
Ms Puriri has not seen or spoken to her children since she managed to
escape to Algiers on February 27 following a tense stand-off between a New
Zealand diplomat and dozens of police, soldiers and Algerian locals.
"It was felt it was too tenuous a position to leave Mihi there any
longer, and she thought it was better for everyone including the children if
she left at the moment."
Mohamed Azzaoui, 36, has accused the New Zealand diplomat involved of
lying about who she was.
He spoke to BBC correspondent Chloe Arnold, who told National Radio
today (Tue) that she spoke to a "very belligerent" Mr Azzaoui last
week.
"He said this is a matter only for him and his wife, and he was
very angry that the media was getting involved. On the telephone he said this
was absolutely nothing to do with anyone but him and his wife," she told
Radio New Zealand.
The retired boxer said he didn't believe New Zealand Consul Barbara
Welton, who had travelled from Cairo to the apartment with a full gendarme
escort to carry out a welfare visit, was who she said she was.
"... he said this was just a New Zealander who had stolen this
woman's business card and pretended to be the consul and come to his home and
tried to steal the children".
Ms Welton was reportedly involved in a tense stand-off over the three
children, and sat on the floor refusing to leave the property "without my
citizens".
Legal experts say that because Algeria is not a signatory to the Hague
Convention, she is at the mercy of the Algerian legal system in the fight for
her children.
The family spokesman agreed, saying Ms Puriri's only options were
through the Algerian courts or through mediation with her husband.
The spokesman was in contact with her daily, and said while the
situation had been very distressing for her and her New Zealand family, she was
staying strong for her children.
She was particularly upset she would miss the first birthday of her
son, who she had been breastfeeding, when he had his birthday later this week.
The three children spoke English, Arabic and French, were
"wonderful", "highly intelligent" and a credit to both
parents, said the spokesman.
After 46 years of marriage, Bellevue's James W. Schumacher, 71, apparently reached a breaking point last week - murdering his longtime wife with a hatchet Wednesday morning while she was in bed, locking the door to the room, waiting two days, then walking into Bellevue police headquarters Friday afternoon and turning himself in for committing the grisly crime. Schumacher told authorities he was tired of his wife's verbal abuse.
Soon after the confession, police found Jean Schumacher, also 71, dead in the couple's home, located in the 100 block of 159th Avenue Southeast in the Lake Hills neighborhood of Bellevue. Police say James Schumacher - who worked 17 years at Boeing and 17 years at U.S. Steel - struck his wife repeatedly in the head with a hatchet Wednesday morning, though it wasn't immediately clear whether she was asleep at the time of the attack.
The Schumachers had been married for going on five decades, but local media outlets paint a (varying) picture of long-term abuse.
In 2010 Jean Schumacher, who suffered from severe arthritis, filed for and received a protection order against her husband. The protection order was dropped last May, at Jean Schumacher's request, about the time Jim Schumacher moved back in to the couple's home after an eight-month estrangement. These facts make every account of the story.
The rest we're left to piece together.
A neighbor tells The Times the couple had relationship problems for decades and that Jean Schumacher told him about a year ago, "If I end up dead, he did it." The Times spoke with neighbor Brad Dutson who was quoted as saying:
"She's mentioned that he's hit her and he's thrown her down the stairs."
Dutson also tells The Times that the Schumachers' son told him at some point that his father had a drinking problem and a long history of violence toward his mother.
Q13 Fox cites court documents related to the 2010 protection order. According to those documents, Jean Schumacher feared for her life because her husband had threatened to kill her.
Q13 also talks to Mary Farrell, described as a neighbor and friend of the Schumachers, who's quoted as saying:
"He wasn`t very nice to her a lot of the times. I talked to her. She told me a few things that made their marriage very difficult."
And ...
"He knocked her down a few times. ... The last he pushed her and she fell with her arthritis. She ended up in the hospital for a few days."
Strangely, KOMO News quotes presumably the same Mary Farrell, writing:
Neighbor Mary Farrell said the couple had been living apart for the past six to eight months, and the husband only recently moved back to the home.
She said the couple had a troubled marriage, but nothing that would have suggested this kind of violence.
"I just can't believe he killed her, though," Farrell said. "I just didn't think he was that violent."
Turns out he was.
On Saturday a King County judge found probable cause to hold James Schumacher in lieu of $1 million bail for investigation of first-degree homicide.
A five-year-old girl at the centre of a parental tug-of-war can leave Northern Ireland to live with her scientist mother in Australia, a High Court judge has ruled.
Mr Justice Weir ruled in favour of the woman taking her daughter, identified only as K, with her in a relocation based on her struggle to find work in Northern Ireland.
He also criticised the girl's father for the "mean" act of giving his ex-partner a dozen eggs a week and some firewood in response to her financial predicament.
The judge said: "I have no confidence that they would mend their ways in this or any other respect if K continued to live in Northern Ireland with her mother."
The child's Australian mother holds a doctorate in a specialist scientific area.
She came to Northern Ireland to take up a university post, later beginning a relationship with the girl's father.
After the child was born they lived together on a farm close to the man's parents, the court heard.
But the woman then lost her job and has since been unable to obtain any further full-time employment in Northern Ireland.
Eventually she moved out of the home and began to explore the option of returning to Australia with her daughter.
With her ex-partner opposed to the child being taken, a series of court battles ensued.
In her evidence, the woman told the court she had relied on income support, child benefit and some making of children's clothes and handbags from which she earned around £2,000 a year.
Conflicting messages
The eggs and firewood from the farm are the only form of material help she receives from the father or his parents, she said.
In November 2011 she had received a job offer with an Australian company with a starting date of last month.
She was prepared to ensure her daughter maintained contact with her father, according to her evidence.
The girl's father acknowledged the advantage of his ex-partner going to work in Australia but claimed it would not benefit his daughter.
He accepted that the mother had facilitated contact for him and his family and did not dispute that her track record backed the view that she would maintain contact.
If the applications to relocate were accepted he said he would have to use the online Skype service to communicate with his daughter.
In a judgment delivered last month but only now published, Mr Justice Weir said he could see no prospect of improved relations between the two sides if the child remains in Northern Ireland.
"I have no doubt that the mother's desire to relocate to Australia is motivated by two principal factors, namely a desire to obtain employment at the level for which she is eminently qualified and to put an end to the depressing series of court cases that have rained incessantly about her head and that of K," he said.
"The sad reality of all relocation cases is that there will always be a parent who regards him or herself as having 'lost' since the child cannot live in two countries at once so that that outcome is inevitable.
"However, if the child were to relocate I am satisfied that both by way of visits by the mother with K to Northern Ireland and by the father to Australia and regular intervening Skype contact the effect of the separation would be mitigated though not of course avoided."
The judge stressed that the child deserved a happy, carefree life without conflicting messages and on-going family battles.
"Of that I consider there is no prospect if she continues to live in Northern Ireland," he said.
"On the other hand, in Australia she would have the benefit of a materially comfortable existence with a mother who feels fulfilled in her work and enlivened by the lack of on-going disputes and would have the compensatory benefit of contact with her maternal grandmother and wider family."
