She Stalked and Murdered Her High School Friend

[2011 | San Francisco, California ]

It was May 27, 2011. Nursing student Michelle Hoang Thi Le never returned after stepping out in the middle of her clinical trial shift at Kaiser Medical Center, San Francisco. CCTV footage from the parking lot recorded her car being driven away.

15 minutes later, about 7 PM, the security guard realized Michelle's absence when he noticed that Michelle did not sign out of her shift in the maternity ward. Laurie Rosa, Michelle's teacher at Samuel Merritt University and the person in charge of the clinical trial, tried reaching out to her via texts and calls, but none of those were returned.

A fellow nurse in the same clinical trial working in the same maternity ward recalled Michelle needing to get something from her car. That was the last she heard from her. Around 30 minutes later, a nurse in the emergency ward received a call from a female claiming she was Michelle and asked for the nurse to let Laurie know that she had to leave early as she received a text that her father had a heart attack.

One and a half-hour later, Laurie was still concerned for her student. She decided to look for Michelle's car with a security guard. Coincidently enough, a white Honda CRV similar to Michelle's car drove into the parking lot. But, all of a sudden, the driver slammed the brakes, reversed, and sped off. Laurie could not make out the driver's face as it left too quickly.

It was unlike Michelle to just disappear and remain uncontactable. Hours later, she was reported missing. The next morning, Hayward Police Inspector Frazer Ritchie, the lead investigator on Michelle's missing case, decided to call and text Michelle's phone. Minutes after he texted, surprisingly, he got a reply saying her phone battery was low. So did other friends of Michelle. One of her friends, Scott, received a reply that she was busy "putting out fires," but that was it without any further reply.

As the investigations went on, the police decided to look into Michelle's social circle, discovering she had a rocky relationship with another fellow high schoolmate, Giselle Esteban. When investigator Ritchie asked about Michelle, Giselle responded,

"Oh God, what about her?"

She didn't bother hiding her hostility as she believed she had good reasons for it. According to her, Michelle was her best friend who slept with her then-fiancé, Scott Marasigan.

The 'Love Triangle'

26-year-old Michelle Le is an American-Vietnamese nursing student, following her mother's footsteps into the nursing field. After an introduction from Giselle, Scott and Michelle briefly dated for a month. Even though things did not work out, Scott and Michelle remained good friends after the breakup.

Months later, Scott and Giselle began dating, but Giselle was convinced that Scott was still seeing Michelle behind her back. She was enraged when she found out that Scott kept Michelle's pregnancy a secret as requested by Michelle. According to Giselle's attorney, Andrea Auer, that was evidence that Scott was unfaithful. Her attorney said,

'What woman tells a man she's not intimate with that she's pregnant and is going to get an abortion?'

In 2005, the couple had a falling off and broke up, but months later, they got back together when Giselle revealed she was pregnant. They lived together for another three years, but Giselle was still insecure and was convinced that Scott was cheating on her with Michelle. Even though Scott kept denying it, Giselle grew more and more hostile with her words.

In 2008, the two broke up again and shared custody of their daughter. When Giselle wanted to move in with her new boyfriend, Scott filed for full custody. Two years later, Giselle broke up with her boyfriend, and she confided in the father of her daughter, Scott, that she was planning to get an abortion with her recent pregnancy.

In the same year, the two did occasionally have sex, but they were not back together. They took classes in high-conflict parenting, where Giselle requested to have a meeting between herself, Scott, and Michelle. But, somehow, that meeting ended up reinforcing her idea that Scott and Michelle are secretly together.

She was hostile in both her words and action. Once, she threw hot coffee at Scott when Scott refused to entertain her idea of him cheating. In one of the many hateful messages Giselle texted to Michelle,

"If you were really anybody's friend, mine or Scott's, you would just fuck off and leave my family alone, but all you are is the whore who had nothing better to do and followed me to SF. That's all you will ever be. The whore who slept with other people's men and brothers because no one wanted you. You aren't my friend. You are always just a parasite. . . ."

And seconds later, she texted both Scott and Michelle,

"You two really do deserve each other. I hope you get what you deserve. You are both pathetic. You with no dreams or goals and the other chasing after someone else's dreams because she has none of her own. You are both parasites."

On May 24, Scott could no longer tolerate her erratic behavior and filed a restraining order.

Michelle's Disappearance

One day before Michelle's disappearance, Giselle went to Merritt, the university Michelle was attending, to schedule an appointment with a student services counsel. When the administrative assistant left the room, Giselle sneakily swiped an identification badge from the desk that was meant for a new faculty member.

After that meeting, CCTV footage captured Giselle using that badge to access the Merritt campus. She also made multiple calls to the hospital, posing as Michelle or inquiring more about Michelle, like her working schedule.

The prosecution deduced that once Giselle obtained enough information from stalking Michelle, she staked out Kaiser's parking lot and ambushed Michelle as evident as the bloodstains. Around 9 PM, Giselle texted a friend asking how to unlock a locked iPhone that she found.

Searching for Michelle

The next day on May 28, Michelle's white Honda SUV with bloodstains was found abandoned a couple of blocks away from the hospital.

That morning, Giselle got an iPhone unlocked by an Apple store employee by explaining her daughter accidentally put a passcode on the phone. Later in the afternoon, she left her daughter and nieces with a chaperone under the excuse she had forgotten to turn off her stove in the apartment. When she returned, the iPhone was no longer found on her.

Later that night, investigators came to her place, inquiring about Michelle, where Giselle clearly expressed that the two weren't in a good place. She said she had been trying to contact Michelle to make sure Michelle kept her distance from her daughter. When Giselle was asked to show proof of the conversation, she explained that the text messages to Michelle were automatically deleted. As for the reason why she had history of other conversations, she claimed she manually saved them.

Michelle's family kept up hope and searched for her for the next four months. They put up billboards and rewards up to $65,000 for information. On the 8th search party, on September 17, a volunteer found a body at Sunol Canyon 20 miles away from the hospital. Dental records confirmed it was indeed Michelle, but they could not identify the cause of death with her body decomposed to the bones.

10 days before discovering Michelle's body, Giselle was charged and arrested for murder. On top of CCTV records, police tracked Giselle's movement matching to Michelle's through their cell phone GPS location. 

With a search warrant, investigators were able to access Giselle's computer that revealed she did search for Michelle's home address. They found Michelle's blood on Giselle's shoe and Giselle's DNA on Michelle's steering wheel. In trial, the prosecution revealed a transcript of text exchanges of Giselle's threatening both Michelle and Scott's safety.

February 26 

"And you can't protect anyone. Your whore will get what she deserves, too."

February 26

"Get rid of your whore. Block her out. Otherwise you bring your own hell on you and all you love."

February 28

"I was loving and open and took care of you and Michelle, and you two lied to me, not once but three times. It's only fitting you pay for your mistake. So will she."

March 2

"And Michelle has dug her own grave by being a homewrecker and a whore. She won't be an issue for much longer."

March 17

"FYI, she won't pass her mid terms."

Giselle, who was pregnant during all of this, gave birth when she was in custody. In Giselle's trial in 2012, she was found guilty of first-degree murder, and sentenced to 25 years in prison. Giselle showed no remorse when the verdict was read out. The judge said,

"To make the decision to kill Michelle Le was clearly proven it was clearly premeditated. It was really cold-blooded. Nowhere have I seen or heard any hint of remorse."

*Source notes are available here.

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