Family feels grief three years later
Dolores
”
Dee Dee
”
Gonzales had a winning smile, an abiding love for children that
was always reciprocated and a frank opinion on just about
anything.
Family feels grief three years later
Dolores “Dee Dee” Gonzales had a winning smile, an abiding love for children that was always reciprocated and a frank opinion on just about anything.
Her family laid her to rest in 2005 on what would have been her 44th birthday.
The Santa Clara man who beat her to death before stuffing her dismembered body into the back of his Volkswagen Jetta on June 5, 2005, was sentenced last week to spend 25 years to life in state prison.
Alexandre Hochstraser, 48, sat impassively as 22 of Gonzales’ friends, coworkers and family members spoke during a sentencing hearing in Judge John F. Herlihy’s court. Herlihy said the first degree murder conviction left him with only two sentencing options, probation or 25-to-life with a chance for parole, according to news accounts. The judge promised to include a strongly worded recommendation against parole.
Gonzales was born in Hollister in 1961, the third of 10 children. She was a 1979 graduate of San Benito High School, where she played in the school band. She worked at the local county library before accepting employment at Mission College in Santa Clara in 1982. She was still working there as an administrator at the time of her death.
Gonzales’ parents and many of her brothers and sisters still live in Hollister.
They waited a long time for their chance to speak, and they were all present, dressed in purple at the sentencing hearing March 20.
A few days after witnessing the end of an ordeal that stretched on for almost three years, Gonzales’ mother, Mary Gonzales, reflected on the nightmarish experience. Dolores is not the first child she has lost. A sister perished at her own hand in 1985.
“One lady said life at Mission College stopped” when Dolores died, Mary said.
Dolores Gonzales and Hochstraser lived together with their son, Daniel. The boy, now 5, was 2 when Hochstraser beat Gonzales to death with a blunt object, cut her to pieces and left them in blue plastic bins in the back of his car. Daniel was with his grandmother at the time of the homicide, Mary said.
He took a life that was filled with hope, family members recalled. Gonzales was a natural with children, and when her own came, they were inseparable. Daniel even came to work at Mission College with her, Mary recalled.
The family maintains a fund for Daniel at San Benito Bank.
The purple family members wore to court last week was significant, Mary explained.
“We have such a big family, at reunions we all wear colors to show which line we come from,” she said. Hochstraser never met their gaze.
When police arrived at the couple’s apartment in 2005, the smell of bleach permeated the house. Investigators quickly located blood stains that were found to match Gonzales’.
Hochstraser reportedly admitted that he hacked the mother of his child to pieces in an attempt to avoid arrest. The only point he and his attorney argued through the trial was whether the killing was premeditated.
“Even the jurors were traumatized,” Mary said. “No human being could understand it.”
But Monday, the day after Easter, Mary Gonzales seemed composed and calm. She talked often of her strong faith, explaining that her strength comes “through the grace of God.”
“I felt peace when the guilty verdict came in [last July],” she said. “My husband came home then and said he felt nothing. He tried to cry but couldn’t.”
The community was generous in its outpouring of grief and concern, Mary said.
“It’s going to take a while to heal,” she said. “We have a lot to be grateful for. I’m really at peace now.”
