Search results
Aug 12, 2021 · Did A College Professor Orchestrate The Revenge Killing Of Her Alleged Rapist Decades Ago? Norma Patricia Esparza said she was raped in 1995 by Gonzalo Ramirez after meeting him at a club. Weeks later, Ramirez turned up dead, but it would take decades before his killers were found.
- Jill Sederstrom
- 2 min
- A Body by The Side of The Road
- “I Thought He Was A Nice Guy”
- “You Were A Victim”
- The Night of The Murder
- “A Very Sophisticated Defendant”
- The Case Against Gianni Van
- “Shutting Down Was The only Way to Deal”
- “What If”
- Two Victims
On the morning of April 16, 1995, a passerby reported a body, wrapped in strips of blue towel and lying by the side of the road, to the police in Irvine, Calif. It was a young man, dead. Bloody gashes covered his head, shoulders, back, and arms. His skull was cracked and two of his fingers hung from one hand, nearly severed. Forensic examiners late...
Norma Patricia Esparza, a 20-year-old sophomore at Pomona College, was home in Santa Ana for the weekend when she met Ramirez. It was March 25, a Saturday night, three weeks before he was killed. Patricia had gone to El Cortez with her sister and a friend from school. Ramirez was there and asked her to dance. At the end of the evening, he asked for...
On May 24, the day after seeing Ramirez’s phone bill with “Paty” scrawled on the back, investigator Ben Meza asked Ramirez’s roommate, Eloe Silva, if he knew who Paty was, the record shows. Silva said that a few weeks before the murder, toward the end of March, Ramirez had come home and told him that he’d been in the dorm room of a girl by that nam...
Until police handcuffed her at Logan Airport, Esparza says she had no idea that she was a wanted fugitive. Held for two months in an Orange County jail, she finally told police her version of the events leading up to Ramirez’s murder. Esparza was then released on $300,000 in bail and allowed to go home to France. In December 2012, prosecutors in Or...
How much responsibility does Patricia Esparza bear for the death of Gonzalo Ramirez? Does her fear and paralysis excuse her, or should she spend years in prison for failing to save the man who raped her? I’ve read thousands of pages of law enforcement records in this case and spoken to as many of the people involved as I could find. Esparza is not ...
When investigator Ben Meza interviewed Gianni Van on June 13, 1995, five days after he talked to Esparza, Van backed up her account. He and Esparza had dated a few times a month, beginning the previous summer and continuing through February. In the first half of April, he’d gone to see her at Pomona and could tell that she was upset. When he asked ...
Esparza was born in a village without running water in southern rural Mexico. When she was five, she moved to Santa Ana with her mother; her older sister, Juana; and her younger brother, Rodrigo. There they joined her father, who’d gone to the U.S. earlier to work in a factory. Esparza has two other younger brothers who were born after the move. As...
In 2010, a pair of new Santa Ana detectives, Dean Fulcher and Frank Fajardo, launched a new chapter in the investigation of Ramirez’s murder. When I emailed Fajardo to ask why, he put me in touch with the public affairs officer for the Orange County Police, who would only say the police had “new leads” at the time. But I can’t find any new evidence...
In the local press, prosecutors have made Esparza sound untrustworthy by saying that “she wants to try this case in the media,” as well as insinuating that she is skilled at playing on emotions. The Los Angeles Times has pointed out that “according to court records, she has changed some details of her story” since she was arrested.*I asked Mancilla...
- Emily Bazelon
Nov 22, 2013 · Nov. 22, 2013 -- The husband of a professor who was accused of participating in the murder of her alleged rapist nearly two decades ago said it was "heartbreaking" to watch his wife taken into custody for a crime she didn't commit. "I saw my wife shackled and taken away.
Jul 15, 2016 · Van, 46, was found guilty of murder last year and received life in prison without parole. Diane Tran, 47, Gries, 45, and 41-year-old Esparza negotiated plea deals. Tran walked out of court having...
Nov 29, 2013 · A psychology professor accused of orchestrating the murder of her alleged rapist in California almost two decades ago told NBC News that her ex-boyfriend -- who she blames for the killing --...
Jul 16, 2016 · Norma Patricia Esparza, 41, was one of five people accused of helping in the kidnapping and slaying of Gonzalo Ramirez, a 24-year-old insulation installer who was hacked to death and dumped by...
People also ask
Who killed Patricia Esparza?
Did Patricia Esparza want Ramirez killed?
Who killed Gonzalo Ramirez?
What happened to Patricia Esparza?
Jul 8, 2020 · Armando Cruz, 24, pleaded not guilty to charges including murder, kidnapping, rape by force and aggravated assault Wednesday in connection with the death of Patricia Alatorre.
