It’s a year later, and authorities don’t seem to be any closer to finding the 6-year-old East Boston boy that went missing last August while visiting with his father in Lynn. Daisy Colon, mother of missing Giovanni Gonzalez, recently held a prayer service at her Eastie home to mark the one year anniversary of his disappearance and to remind people to keep looking for her son. She refused to hold a candlelight vigil because, in her words, that would be saying he’s dead.

“He’s not dead for me,” she said. Colon has also raised a $7,000 reward and hopes that will begin to bring new clues and leads about the boy’s disappearance. The $7,000 reward will be given to anyone who can lead police to Giovanni’s whereabouts. Giovanni’s father, Ernesto Gonzalez Jr., is being held on $500,000 cash bail in connection with the boy’s disappearance, and he has even gone so far as to confess to murdering the boy--although authorities believe that is unlikely based on evidence.

Colon, has raised $2,000 with the help of friends and family and the Carole Sund-Carrington Foundation of Modesto, Calif., has offered an additional $5,000, bringing the total reward amount to $7,000. Last November, right before Colon was to mark her first Thanksgiving holiday without her son, Gonzalez dropped a cruel bombshell. The elder Gonzalez told a Boston Globe reporter he had in fact killed his son, chopped him up in his Lynn apartment, placed his body in trash bags and then distributed the bags around Lynn to various dumpsters throughout the city.

Giovanni was dropped off by Colon at his father’s Brightwood Terrace apartment in Lynn on Friday, August 15, 2008. That was the last time Colon saw her son, and since then, she has made several distraught pleas for the boy’s safe return. Gonzalez’s told the Globe that his son was “behaving badly,” and next thing he knew, he was stabbing the boy. He said he then dismembered Giovanni’s body in his bathtub, put the pieces in trash bags and then rode around on his bike later in the afternoon, disposing of the remains in various dumpsters in Lynn.

If the confession holds, Gonzalez will surely become one of Lynn’s ugliest murderers in years, a man so heartless and unfeeling that he could murder then cut his son’s body into pieces. However, officials have doubted the confession since it was first reported, and Essex District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett remains skeptical.

Why is he skeptical? For starters, Gonzalez’s version of events doesn’t match forensic evidence found at the scene and experts would say that dismembering a body in a bathtub--no matter how carefully one cleaned up after--there would be traces of blood and other evidence left behind. Also, witnesses and neighbors at the Brightwood Terrace apartment complex said they heard a boy’s laughter coming from Gonzalez’s apartment after Gonzalez had supposedly already killed his son.

A week before the confession, Gonzalez asked the court to drop the charges against him. Colon told police she brought her son to visit his father that Friday as part of an unofficial custody arrangement. She returned to pick him up two days later and Gonzalez wouldn’t answer the door.

Police were called to the apartment and found Gonzalez inside, alone, nursing a cut to his hand. He told police he hadn’t seen the boy and was uncooperative. Police later learned that at least one witness saw Gonzalez with Giovanni on Saturday, August 16. Ernesto Gonzalez was arrested and charged with child endangerment. 

Since Gonzalez’s arrest, police found items in his apartment that were apparently stained with blood. The items included a mop, a bottle of pine cleaner, and a knife that all tested positive for blood. It was an ominous find by investigators as they obtained a search warrant to search Gonzalez’s Lynn home further. However, lab results that tested the mop and other items from the apartment were sent back to investigators, and since their return, there has been a shift in attitude and the search for Giovanni. They said the blood wasn’t a match with the boy’s.

At one point, police used cadaver sniffing dogs to search Pine Grove Cemetery in Lynn. However, after tests were conducted on the mop, investigators said they are revisiting their original search for the boy to see if they missed any evidence or leads about his whereabouts the first time around. The boy’s father was a meat butcher by trade. Anyone with information about Giovanni Gonzalez is urged to call Lynn Police at 781-595-2000.

“We still have optimistic hopes Giovanni Gonzalez is alive,” said District Attorney Blodgett recently.

Giovanni’s disappearance sparked a massive search for the boy that included the FBI, Lynn and State Police. Roadblocks were established throughout Lynn so law enforcement agents could hand out information and flyers with a picture and description of the child.