Sisters Spent 17 Years Trying to find Brother Earlier than Studying He Died by Suicide

On Sept. 15, 2007, 23-year-old Jean Eli Gonzalez known as his mother again residence in Puerto Rico to let her know that he’d arrived safely in Chicago. Then she by no means heard from him once more. 

Virtually 20 years later, his household — who spent years grappling with unanswered questions that solely fueled their concern and despair — lastly realized what occurred to him.

In line with CBS News, Gonzalez’s title was uploaded into the Nationwide Lacking and Unidentified Individuals System (NamUs) by the Cook dinner County Medical Examiner’s Workplace as a part of a chilly case venture in February 2025, ultimately main his household to be taught that their beloved son and brother had died by suicide.

His physique had been discovered hanging off a billboard in a railroad yard close to the Dan Ryan Expressway on Sept. 24, 2007, simply 9 days after he arrived in Chicago, based on the police report reviewed by PEOPLE. Investigators confirmed the reason for loss of life was the results of despair.

“The one aid we’ve got is that we all know now the place he [died] and that we are able to say goodbye to him,” his sister, Vilmarilys Hernandez, tells PEOPLE. However so many questions stay, she says.

Gonzalez was a form man, who wasn’t afraid to struggle for others. Vilmarilys remembers as soon as when her brother, then 15 years outdated, jumped in to guard center college college students from a bunch of older highschool college students once they had been rising up in San Lorenzo. He was stabbed with a pocket knife and hospitalized. 

“My brother noticed that no person was doing something and he intervened,” the 45-year-old esthetician says. “So, that was my brother.”

However Gonzalez had his struggles. He was utilizing medicine and determined to go to Chicago for a substance abuse program, Segunda Vida, which he realized about from native cops. His mother nonetheless has the brochure. (The remedy facility is now defunct.)

Every week after Gonzalez arrived in Chicago and instructed his mother an individual from this system had picked him up, Vilmarilys had a disturbing dream. “He was telling me within the airport, ‘Don’t be concerned, the whole lot’s going to be okay. I like you,’ ” she remembers. “And I took that as goodbye.”

Vilmarilys awoke crying and instantly urged her mother to name this system. When their mother reached an worker on the program, she was instructed that the household couldn’t discuss to Gonzalez. This system by no means known as again as promised, based on Vilmarilys. Days later, an worker instructed the fearful mother that Gonzalez had left this system. 

So started the household’s determined search. Vilmarilys recollects calling the Chicago Police Division, native hospitals and homeless shelters within the space. She was unable to file a lacking individuals report, regardless of her request to authorities. She then known as anywhere she might consider, searching for assist for days, weeks and months, which was years.

The grieving sister says the toll on her household was nice. “Possibly he does not need to discuss with us. Possibly he is mad at us,” Vilmarilys says of the questions Gonzalez’s 4 siblings and mother had as they feared what had occurred to him. “Possibly he is ashamed of himself, however what is going on on? Possibly he is chilly, possibly he is hungry.” 

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It wasn’t till this spring that they realized Gonzalez had died. 

In 2023, the Cook dinner County Medical Examiner’s Workplace started inputting the paper information of chilly circumstances of unidentified individuals into NamUs, specializing in the years from 1988 to 2014, a Cook dinner County spokesperson confirmed to PEOPLE. 

“Our workers labored tirelessly to search out photographs, organic samples for DNA evaluation, fingerprint playing cards and dental info for these decedents so as to create a report,” the Cook dinner County spokesperson says. “Regulation enforcement businesses have been vital companions on this course of by looking their warehouses and proof rooms for something that might help in figuring out these decedents.”

To this point, greater than 200 decedents have been included in NamUs and 20 circumstances have been resolved, with Gonzalez’s case being one in all them.

After his case was put into NamUs, CBS Information reported, Vilmarilys noticed his image on Fb, which had been reposted by a bunch of moms who needed to assist individuals discover their lacking family members. His identification was confirmed after Vilmarilys and her sister traveled to Chicago to supply a DNA pattern.

However with the affirmation got here new grief. They realized that Gonzalez’s physique had been discovered with a handwritten be aware in Spanish, which contained the Serenity Prayer. Their brother’s title was written on the high, which prompted the investigating officer to make use of the title for the deceased, based on the police report.

After the investigating officer discovered a girl with the identical title in Elmwood Park, who had no information of the useless man, the title was modified to unknown. After that, a replica of the report was despatched to the lacking individuals division and the case was suspended, pending identification of the deceased, the police report mentioned.

Vilmarilys was disturbed by what she tells PEOPLE was an absence of a radical investigation, particularly as a result of she’d given authorities an outline of her brother and had known as to ask about his disappearance for years.

The Chicago Police Division didn’t reply to PEOPLE’s request for remark about her claims. Moreover, the Cook dinner County Medical Examiner’s Workplace wouldn’t share any specifics about Gonzalez’s case with PEOPLE.

Vilmarilys and her sister had been unable to get Gonzalez’s stays, which, based on CBS Information, have been interred in Homewood Memorial Gardens, which has served as Cook dinner County’s potter’s discipline for unclaimed our bodies, since 2008.

Gonzalez’s household, nevertheless, was capable of begin a donation web page, so their brother might have a correct gravestone. The sisters created matching T-shirts that say “we discovered you” in Spanish and plan on visiting his grave.

Vilmarilys tells PEOPLE, “We’re simply ready for the day to go there and say our final goodbye to him.”