ATLANTIC BEACH, Fla. – A statement from a then 12-year-old girl to Jacksonville police in a 2020 murder case was one of the factors that led detectives to the arrest of a 23-year-old man.
After years of interviewing witnesses and collecting evidence, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office arrested Hudson Rady on Jan. 3 in connection to the shooting death of a man in an Atlantic Beach home.
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The girl spoke out to police in April 2023 because she wanted to retract her previous story to “clear her mother’s name.” The daughter said her mother was blamed for the murder of 43-year-old Israel Gonzales until she died in May 2022.
Gonzales was found shot to death inside a home on Redfin Drive in October 2020. JSO suspected the murder happened during a home invasion robbery, and initially told the media that Gonzales had been stabbed in a “suspicious death.”
Gonzales’ wife said in an interview with detectives that she found her husband dead in the master bedroom partially wrapped in the bedding and had bleach poured all over him.
Police said Gonzales was shot four times and a note was found with a note that read “You’re Fam is next” on his forehead.
According to an arrest report, the wife said she and her daughter returned home when a friend dropped them off on Oct. 11, 2022, around 10 or 1030 p.m. after visiting her son’s apartment that he shared with Rady.
The wife went to bed in the guest room while her husband was sleeping in the main bedroom, according to the report.
Around 4 a.m., the wife said she found the house in disarray and her husband dead. Phone records show the wife called her son to pick up her daughter and then called police after the 12-year-old left.
Detectives said during questioning, the wife said she saw Rady leaving out the back door of the home when she woke up.
In the initial interview with the daughter, she told police that her brother picked her up because she saw a suspicious vehicle outside the home and was scared, but she then changed that story and said her brother told her to say that.
The daughter said, according to the report, that she woke up first, saw the house was in disarray and woke her mother up to tell her what she found. She told investigators that her brother came to get her and took her back to his apartment afterward.
Detectives said the scene looked like it was staged to resemble a burglary, noting that no other areas of the home were left messed up.
Police went through the daughter’s cell phone records and found a conversation between her and Rady that happened hours before Gonzalez was killed. One message from Rady around 11:17 p.m. appeared to instruct the daughter to open the door of the home, police said.
During the investigation, detectives spoke to someone who was close to Rady and told them that Rady admitted to killing Gonzales and throwing the gun in the ocean.
Police interviewed Rady at the time and he denied being in the home and denied any involvement in the case.
Two years later, in April 2022, the daughter came to police to tell the truth about what happened that day in 2020.
She told police that Gonzales was “treating her mother poorly and her mom was upset about his actions.”
The report said she, her mother, Rady and other people were at her brother’s apartment that night. The daughter said Rady was aware of Gonzales’ treatment of her mother.
She told police that she saw him packing bleach and other cleaning supplies before leaving the house.
The daughter and the mother left the apartment with a friend, who dropped them off at home. When she got home, she said to police, that she noticed Rady’s grandmother’s car parked nearby. Then, she said she saw him hiding behind her mother’s car.
She went inside the home and fell asleep. Then about 30 minutes later, the daughter said she got a text from Rady telling her to open the back door, the report said.
According to the daughter, Rady came inside the home, grabbed a pillow and went to the other bedroom where Gonzales was sleeping.
The daughter said she heard four pops and saw Rady with blood on his face. She then told police that Rady told her to help stage the house to look like an intruder came in.
Rady changed out of his all-black attire and threw the clothes in the washing machine. Police said the clothing was collected as evidence.
The daughter said Rady wrote the note that was found on Gonzales’s forehead. He also took his designer frames and poured bleach over his body.
The daughter said Rady told her to wake up her mother, who she said was asleep the entire time, and tell her what she found.
Because of the daughter’s statement, Rady’s and Gonzales’s DNA on the clothes found at the scene, Rady was arrested.
He now faces multiple charges including second-degree murder, armed burglary and tampering with evidence.
It’s unclear if the daughter will face any charged.
Rady is being held in the Duval County jail and is set to appear in court on Jan. 29.