SANTA ANA: A psychologist is expected to be sentenced on Friday to six years in prison for the 1995 killing of a man she says raped her while she was a college student.
Norma Patricia Esparza is scheduled to be sentenced in Orange County Superior Court along with two co-defendants.
Esparza, who is now 41, pleaded guilty in 2014 to voluntary manslaughter in exchange for a six year sentence for the killing of Gonzalo Ramirez.
Esparza pointed out Ramirez at a bar in 1995 to her former boyfriend Gianni Van and others who kidnapped and killed him, authorities said. Ramirez’s bloodied body was found by the side of a road in Irvine, California, but the case went cold for years.
Esparza was arrested in 2012 while visiting the United States from France. Born in Mexico, Esparza grew up in California, obtained a doctorate in psychology and worked a consultant for the World Health Organization and as a professor in Switzerland.
Her case drew international attention and stoked an outcry from campus sexual assault victims’ advocates, who said Esparzas’s arrest sent a chilling message to rape survivors.
(Sourced from agencies, Feature image courtesy:notey.com)
