GUILTY CA - Gonzalo Ramirez, 24, abducted & murdered, Costa Mesa, 16 April 1995

Professor faces trial for '95 killing of alleged rapist

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/11/21/california-professor-rape-murder-trial/3669765/

Rejecting a plea deal and maintaining her innocence, a psychology professor now faces trial for her alleged involvement in the murder of a man she claimed raped her 18 years ago when she was a student in Southern California.

Norma Patricia Esparza, 39, who lives in France near the Swiss border and teaches in Geneva, was taken to jail Thursday after an Orange County judge revoked the $300,000 bail that had allowed her to remain free since last year. After previously pleading not guilty, she rejected the prosecutor's offer to plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter and be sentenced to three years in prison......more.......
 
http://www.theday.com/article/20140813/NWS02/140819828/1047

New London business owner Roderick Cornish has become a reluctant witness in a cold case murder in Orange County, Calif., that he says he knows nothing about.

At the request of California authorities, New London Superior Court Judge Hillary B. Strackbein on Wednesday ordered Cornish to travel to Santa Ana, Calf., on Tuesday to testify before a grand jury in the murder trial of Norma Patricia Esparza. Prosecutors allege that Esparza may have confided details of the case to Cornish during telephone and online conversations...

“During at least one phone call, Roderick tells Esparza he loves her,” according to the court document. “Esparza tells Cornish in another phone call to delete all of their e-mail correspondence, and Cornish agrees to do so.”
 
http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-81353636/

A professor of psychology who was arrested nearly two years ago in the cold case slaying of a man she said had raped her pleaded guilty Friday to a reduced charge of voluntary manslaughter...

She is expected to be sentenced to six years in state prison and will testify against her co-defendants, the Orange County district attorney’s office said in a news release.
 
What a tangled case this is. Without being able to put myself in her place mentally at the time of the alleged rape and murder, it is difficult to pass judgment on what she should have done in the aftermath. However, my concern is more with her previous relationship with Van, who, according to one article, she broke up with because he had become too possessive. So, only questions remain. Did she not know what he was capable of? Only she knows. Why did she confide the alleged rape to him? Only she knows. Was Ramirez guilty of date-rape? Most likely, however, 1995 wasn't that long ago, and authorities would have listened to her. What purpose did it serve her to point out Ramirez to Van and his group? That is what I believe is why she is now facing six years in prison, and she is rather fortunate it isn't longer considering that without her identification of Ramirez to the others, he would not have been brutally murdered that night.

My sympathy for her daughter, who will miss out of several years of being with her mother, a mother who will now be a convicted felon.

MOO
 
From July 2015:

http://orangecountyda.org/civica/press/display.asp?layout=2&Entry=4376

A defendant was sentenced today to life in state prison without the possibility of parole for the special circumstances cold case kidnapping and stabbing murder of a man in 1995. Gianni Anthony Van, 45, Costa Mesa, was found guilty by a jury on May 7, 2015, of one felony count of special circumstances murder during the commission of a kidnapping.

Co-defendant Diane Tran, 46, Costa Mesa, pleaded guilty on Jan. 24, 2014, to one felony count of voluntary manslaughter with a sentencing enhancement for being armed with a firearm during the commission of a felony. She faces a maximum sentence of four years in state prison at her sentencing on March 25, 2016...

Co-defendant Shannon Ray Gries, 44, Santa Ana, is charged with one felony count of special circumstances murder during the commission of a kidnapping and a sentencing enhancement for the personal use of a firearm.
 
http://www.sfgate.com/nation/article/Psychologist-faces-sentencing-for-1995-murder-8381056.php

A former psychology professor was sentenced Friday to six years in prison for the 1995 killing of a man she says raped her while she was a Southern California college student.

Norma Patricia Esparza, 41, pleaded guilty in 2014 to voluntary manslaughter in exchange for the prison term in the death of Gonzalo Ramirez.

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/esparza-722591-ramirez-tran.html

Tran and Gries were also sentenced Friday as part of their own plea deals. Tran was sentenced to four years, while Gries was ordered to serve 25 years to life behind bars.
 
I watched this story in Dateline or 48 Hours - can't remember which. Anyway, I didn't buy her story at all, didn't find her credible in the least. She deserves the sentence she received, if not more (IMO).
 
I watched this story in Dateline or 48 Hours - can't remember which. Anyway, I didn't buy her story at all, didn't find her credible in the least. She deserves the sentence she received, if not more (IMO).
Totally agree. I found her story of events to be lacking, especially after it was discovered she was back in America to see another man. Wonder what her husband thought of that? I wanted to scream when she said she didn't deserve to be torn away from her daughter and it wasn't fair. The parents of Gonzolo were torn away from their son and can never get him back. What about his daughters that were toddlers when he was murdered.
 

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