Professor Faces Trial in Her Rapist’s Slaying in California 18 Years Ago

[Megamel29]

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crim...icle-1.1525552

A successful European professor has been jailed in California after being accused of having four friends kill her rapist in a case stretching back 18 years.

Patricia Esparza, 39, was only arrested last year in connection with the 1995 murder of Gonzalo Ramirez, 24, who was found dead on the side of an Irvine road.

She had been out on bail, but when she rejected a plea deal Thursday that would have given her a three-year prison sentence, her bail was revoked.

Now she faces trial on one count of special circumstances murder during the commission of a kidnapping.

"This is an incredible injustice," Esparza's husband, Jorge Mancillas, told the Los Angeles Times after the hearing. "I guess in Orange County it doesn't count to be innocent."

At the time of the murder, Esparza was an 18-year-old sophomore at Pomona College. She has told prosecutors that Ramirez gave her a ride back to her Claremont dorm room before sexually assaulting her there after a night out at a club.

When Esparza told a former boyfriend, Gianni Anthony Van, of the assault, he became enraged and tracked down Ramirez about a month later. Prosecutors contend Van, Shannon Gries and Diane Tran beat and hacked Ramirez with a meat cleaver before dumping his body.

They all stand trial in connection with the crime and have pleaded not guilty.

A fourth suspect, Kody Tran, died last year in a shootout with police, the Times reports.

After the murder, Esparza started dating Van again and eventually married the man so she wouldn’t have to testify against him if charged with the slaying, the Times reported.

The pair divorced after nine years of marriage and Esparza went on to become an assistant professor of psychology and counseling at a university in Geneva.

She’s married with a young daughter.

Esparza was arrested last year during a layover in Boston while she was en route to a conference in St. Louis.

“It's very peaceful. It's very quiet,” she told the Times of her new life. “It's a very good place to be if you want to raise a daughter that doesn't have to go out at night and fear for what kind of harm can come to her.”

[Shakey]

I don't see, in this story anyway, where she actually "ordered" his murder.

[Azimuth]

Originally Posted by Shakey

I don't see, in this story anyway, where she actually "ordered" his murder.

Me neither, and I'm too tired to dig into the story any deeper today, darn it. It's very interesting.

[Shakey]

Originally Posted by azimuth

Me neither, and I'm too tired to dig into the story any deeper today, darn it. It's very interesting.

What the fuck happened to my little saying I said that you had?

[Pyramid_Head]

Here's hoping she gets off. However to me, I never read anything to make me think she ordered the slaying. Sounds like to me, if anyone is guilty, it would be the two that actually killed the guy.

[Oswald2001]

I hope she walks.

[kellyhound]

When she later told Van about the rape, he was "enraged." Van took her back to the nightclub to look for Ramirez. "[Van was] insisting, yelling, telling me that I had to point out the rapist," she testified.

Van, Gries, and Kody Tran (who died in a shootout with police last year), planned to beat Ramirez up and took him to a transmission shop owned by Tran while Esparza and Gries's then-girlfriend, Julie Ann Rojas, went to a bar and waited for an hour, according to Esparaza.

Esparza said that she later saw Ramirez tied and hanging from the ceiling in the shop.

Esparza married Van later that year, but she says she did it because she feared for her life and was told that if she married him she couldn't be forced to testify against him.

beating up turned out to be a murder without her presence but she was aware later he had died and married bf to evt not testify against him so that makes her an accomplish in murder ?