Giselle Esteban

Case record: Giselle Esteban

Background

Michelle Hoang Thi Le was a 26-year old nursing student who disappeared on May 27, 2011 from the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in the San Francisco Bay Area city of Hayward, California.

Le grew up in San Diego County and moved to the San Francisco Bay Area for college and nursing school at Samuel Merritt University in Oakland, California. Her mother died of cancer when Le was a teenager.

Le lived in San Mateo and hoped to become a nurse practitioner like her mother.

Le’s car was found the next morning around 9 am parked on Ponderosa Court, about half a mile from the medical center.

Le’s family put up billboards and offered a $65,000 reward for information about her whereabouts. Over the next four months at least eight volunteer search efforts were undertaken, some organized by the Klaas Kids Foundation, founded by Marc Klaas after his daughter Polly was kidnapped and murdered in 1993. A variety of missing persons organizations joined in the searches.

The eighth search found decomposed human remains in a remote canyon area on September 17.

On September 19, 2011 the Alameda County coroner's office positively identified the remains to be those of Michelle Le.

The offence

Giselle Diwal Esteban of Union City, California, a Filipino-American former friend of Le, was arrested on September 7 and charged with her murder, although a body had not yet been found at that time.

Authorities said they had DNA evidence in the form of blood stains found in Le’s car and on Esteban’s shoe. Security video footage confirmed Esteban’s presence in the area at the time Le disappeared.

Police suspected from the beginning that Le had been killed by someone she knew.

Prosecutors said Esteban tracked Le’s movements before attacking the 26-year-old San Mateo woman in the parking garage of Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Hayward on May 27, 2011.

Prosecutors said Esteban then drove a dying Le in the victim’s car and dumped her body off a path in Sunol Canyon east of Fremont. Le’s skeletal remains weren’t found for more than three months. The cause of death could not be determined.

Deputy District Attorney Butch Ford told jurors that Esteban grew to hate Le when the victim had a brief relationship with Scott Marasigan, Esteban's ex-boyfriend and father of their 6-year-old daughter.

Ford said Esteban was convinced Marasigan was infatuated with Le even after the two broke up.

Although Marasigan denied his relationship with Le was sexual, Ford told jurors that Esteban sent him texts warning that if he didn't cut Le out of his life, “punishment would be swift.”

Ford said Esteban also told Marasigan that both he and Le deserved to die.

Ford called Esteban a “sociopath.”

Esteban allegedly blamed Le for ruining her relationship with her ex-boyfriend, with whom she had a child, but denied any involvement in Le's disappearance.

Esteban’s attorney Andrea Auer acknowledged that her client had killed Le, but urged jurors to convict her only of voluntary manslaughter. Auer said Le had provoked Esteban, and Esteban committed the killing “in the heat of passion.”

Investigation

DNA evidence and surveillance camera footage were key pieces of evidence that led to the arrest of Giselle Esteban on suspicion of killing her former friend Michelle Le.

Police said bloodstains inside Le’s car belonged to Le, who disappeared May 27.

Security camera footage at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Hayward revealed that Esteban was in the parking structure before and after Le disappeared.

Cell phone records indicated that both women’s phones traveled a similar route immediately after the disappearance, with some transmissions coming from the Niles Canyon and Sunol Canyon areas.

Police said there was evidence indicating that Esteban had been inside Le’s car, which was found the day after she disappeared about a half mile from Kaiser.

Police said Le’s DNA was found on the bottom of one of Esteban’s shoes collected during a May 29 search of the suspect's home.

Police said there was nothing to indicate that anyone else was involved in Le’s disappearance.

Hayward police Lt. Roger Keener said the arrest did not mark the end of the investigation and that investigators would not consider the investigation complete until Michelle was found.

Keener said investigators waited to make the arrest until enough evidence came back to indicate Esteban is responsible, and that they “did not want to rush to judgment.”

Arrest

Giselle Esteban was arrested on September 7 without incident and searched her Union City home shortly after 9 a.m. Wednesday.

Keener said several officers were seen leaving the complex with shopping bags about noon, and they confiscated Esteban’s Honda CR-V.

Esteban told KGO-TV before she was arrested that she blamed Le for breaking up her relationship with Scott Marasigan, her ex-boyfriend and the father of their 5-year-old daughter. She denied having anything to do with Le's disappearance.

Esteban was being held without bail at Santa Rita Jail in Dublin.

Esteban was arrested at her condominium on Monterra Terrace in Union City, about 12 miles from the site where the body was found.

Before Le’s disappearance, Esteban was the subject of a restraining order filed by her ex-boyfriend and child's father May 24, days before Le's disappearance.

The restraining order described erratic and threatening behavior, including Esteban threatening to shoot herself if the man did not speak to her, and indicated that he believed she was in possession of a firearm.

The restraining order indicated multiple text messages sent once a day for a month to her former boyfriend, “telling me to put a bullet in my brain.”

In an interview before the arrest, Marasigan said: “You never know what someone is capable of doing until they do it.”

Marasigan also said: “There's nothing to that,” and added: “I never saw any indication that Esteban might be targeting Le.”

Marasigan further said: “I thought it was all against me.”

Since initially contacting the news station, Esteban declined to comment.

Trial

Esteban was indicted on a murder charge December 14, 2011 and entered a not-guilty plea.

At a hearing before her plea, prosecutor Butch Ford and defense attorney Andrea Auer had a 10-minute conversation with an animated Judge Carrie Panetta. Judge Panetta said at a previous hearing that she would not allow further delays without a compelling reason.

Before the plea, Esteban waived her right to a speedy trial.

Before her plea, the case had been bogged down due to Esteban's pregnancy and repeated requests for continuations until prosecutors secured a grand jury indictment on Dec. 14.

A trial date was set for September 17, 2012.

Esteban did not testify in her three-week trial.

On October 29, 2012 a jury convicted Esteban of first-degree murder after deliberating for a week.

Outside court after the verdict, Ford said: “They got to the right result.”

Sentencing

On December 10, Esteban was given 25 years to life in prison.

Esteban was sentenced on December 10 by Judge Jon Rolefson in Alameda County Superior Court.

Outcome

On December 10, 2012 Esteban received a sentence of 25 years to life in prison for first-degree murder.

Le’s brother Michael Le said outside court: “We were hoping and praying that they would make the right call, and they did.”

Michael Le also said: “I feel a tremendous burden has been lifted, but we still have to process it.”

Krystine Dinh, Le’s cousin, burst into tears after the verdict was read.

Asked if she believed Esteban should remain in prison for the rest of her life, Dinh said: “She took Michelle's life, and that's for God to judge.”

Esteban’s attorney Andrea Auer left court without commenting.

Aftermath

The volunteer who found the body of missing nursing student Michelle Le over the weekend was Carrie McGonigle, the mother of 14-year-old Amber Dubois.

Police said McGonigle and her search dog found Le's remains Saturday in Sunol Canyon in Alameda County.

Police said McGonigle’s daughter and Chelsea King, 17, of San Diego were raped and killed by registered sex offender John Gardner III, who was serving a life sentence.

McGonigle declined to comment Tuesday, saying she would speak about the discovery today.

Marc Klaas said: “Carrie happened to be the right person on the right team at the right place at the right time.”

Klaas also said: “I have no doubt in my mind that this is of great personal satisfaction to Carrie and that Amber is looking down on her from heaven with pride in her heart and a big smile on her face,”

The Alameda County coroner had yet to determine how Le died at the time the body was discovered.

In a statement, Le's family said they were planning a memorial service to give her a “proper goodbye.”

Le’s family said: “Thank you for your support, prayers and thoughts. Our family has greatly appreciated, and would be at a loss without, the help of so many people and volunteers,”

Polly was kidnapped and killed by career criminal Richard Allen Davis in 1993.

Other details

Le vanished May 27 while on a break from her clinical duties as a nursing student at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Hayward, where she shadowed medical personnel as part of her nursing school curriculum.

Le’s disappearance triggered an outpouring from the community, after family members and friends made numerous public appeals for help.

Police classified the case as a homicide shortly after the disappearance.

Police briefly took Esteban into custody.

Esteban contacted a television news station to tell them that though she disliked Le and blamed Le for ruining the relationship Esteban had with her child's father, she had nothing to do with Le's disappearance.

Marasigan said he was frustrated by Esteban’s belief that Le was a threat to their relationship and said: “There's nothing to that.”

Esteban tracked Le’s movements before attacking her in the parking garage.

Before the slaying, Marasigan filed for a temporary restraining order against Esteban three days before Le disappeared.

Before the slaying, Ford said Esteban did a computer search for Le's home address, stole a security badge and class roster from staff at Samuel Merritt University, which Le was attending, and called employees in attempts to learn Le’s schedule.

Cell phone records showed that after Le disappeared from Kaiser Permanente Medical Center's garage in Hayward, both women’s cell phones “traveled on a similar path” to the Niles and Sunol Canyon areas in Alameda County.

Le was last seen May 27 when she went to her car during a break in a clinical nursing lesson at Kaiser. While she took her cellphone and keys, she left her wallet and purse behind and had plans to drive to Reno to visit friends later that night.

Police said Le was attacked in the hospital’s garage.

Esteban, 27, told an interviewer shortly after Le vanished that she openly hated Le for ruining her relationship with her former boyfriend.

The body was found in Sunol Canyon on September 17, 2011, and the Alameda County coroner's office positively identified the remains on September 19, 2011.

On September 19, 2011 the body was identified as Michelle Le by the coroner’s office.

Henry K. Lee authored one of the reports about the case, and Eric Kurhi authored reports about the case; both reports included quoted statements attributed to the relevant individuals in the case.