Norma Esparza was a sophomore at Pomona College in 1995 when she went to a bar with her future husband and his pals and pointed out a man she said raped her in her dormitory. Hours later, the body of Gonzalo Ramirez — beaten and hacked with a meat cleaver — was found dead along a road in Irvine.
Nearly two decades later, Esparza, now 39, lives in France with her second husband and is a psychology professor at a university in Geneva.
But Orange County, Calif., authorities have never stopped trying to solve the murder of Ramirez. And when Esparza came to the U.S. last year for an academic conference in St. Louis, police picked her up when her plane landed in Boston for a layover. They charged her with one felony count of special circumstances murder during the commission of a kidnapping.
She claims to have rebuffed a deal to plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter, and on Thursday, a judge in Santa Ana revoked Esparza's $300,000 bail and ordered her jailed. The courtroom drama came a day after Esparza, flanked by anti-rape advocates and her husband and daughter, vowed to fight to keep her from prison.
A native of Mexico, Esparza moved to California as a child and received her formal education at top U.S. institutions, including the Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire and DePaul University in Chicago. She has also lived in Spain and Kenya, according to a copy of her resume posted on Webster University’s website.
Esparza told the Times she failed to report the rape, which allegedly occurred the morning after meeting Ramirez.
She’s now worried the new life she built a world away from the alleged murder she took part in may soon fall apart.
“It’s very peaceful. It’s very quiet,” she said of her small town life in France. “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.”
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/11/24/european-psych-professor-fights-charges-in-5-rape-revenge-murder/