Immigration officials target psychology professor convicted in killing of a man she says raped her

SANTA ANA, Calif. — U.S. immigration officials are moving to revoke the citizenship of a former psychology professor who was imprisoned for her role in the killing of a man she says raped her three decades ago in an Orange County case that angered sexual assault victims worldwide.

Norma Patricia Esparza, 52, was released from prison in 2018 after serving a six-year sentence for voluntary manslaughter in the 1995 meat cleaver attack on Riverside resident Gonzalo Ramirez by her then boyfriend — a case that remained unsolved for 17 years.

Esparza’s case became a cause celebre among rape victims and their advocates, who argued she should be treated like a victim and not a criminal. An international petition to keep Esparza from being criminally prosecuted generated more than 6,000 signatures.

Now, U.S. officials are trying to strip the daughter of Mexican immigrants of her citizenship, alleging she failed to divulge the slaying in 1996 on naturalization papers.

In a civil complaint filed Sept. 22 in federal court, the U.S. Department of Justice’s immigration litigation denaturalization unit said Esparza “willfully misrepresented and concealed her criminal conduct throughout her naturalization process. Had she disclosed her criminal conduct, it would have clarified that she was ineligible to naturalize.”

Esparza applied for citizenship in 1996, a year after the killing.

The immigration form asked: “Have you ever knowingly committed any crime for which you have not been arrested?” She answered “no.”

Esparza later was interviewed under oath by an Immigration and Naturalization Service examiner. She again was asked if she had committed a crime for which she had not been arrested. Esparza again answered no, according to the complaint.

“Defendant illegally procured her naturalization and obtained her naturalization through willful misrepresentation and concealment and the United States brings this civil action to revoke and set aside the order admitting defendant to U.S. citizenship,” said the complaint by federal attorney Jacob Max Weintraub.

Citizens who are unnaturalized are eligible for deportation, but immigration officials have not disclosed whether that’s their plan for Esparza. Weintraub referred a request for comment to a DOJ spokesman in Washington, D.C., who declined to talk about the case.

Esparza’s attorney, Shuting Chen, did not respond to a request for comment.

Immigrated at age 5

Esparza had been in the United States since she was 5, immigrating with her mother from El Taray, Mexico, to Santa Ana.

Growing up, Esparza was a brilliant student, surviving what she said were sexual assaults by a relative.

By 15, she had earned a merit-based scholarship to the prestigious Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. The school sent her through a special study program to Barcelona, Spain. Another scholarship brought her to Pomona College in Claremont, where she majored in psychology.

When she was arrested, Esparza had been living in France with her husband and 4-year-old daughter, teaching psychology at an academy in Geneva and vacationing in the Swiss Alps. Police picked her up in 2012 after she came back to the United States for a professional conference.

How it started

Esparza met Ramirez, 24, at the El Cortez bar in Santa Ana. The two hit it off and the next day he invited her to breakfast. After eating, he drove her back to her Pomona College dorm, where Esparza said he raped her.

Esparza was interviewed in 1995 by a Santa Ana police detective investigating Ramirez’s death. According to a transcript of Esparza’s interview, Ramirez had asked her to have sex with him. When she declined, he said he was tired and she allowed him to lie on her bed.

She sat on the bed next to him and they continued to talk. Ramirez told her he hadn’t had sex in a long time and tried to pull her pants off. Esparza, at 4-foot-9 and 95 pounds, struggled to keep her clothes on, she said.

“After struggling with him for several minutes she finally decided to quit struggling because she felt that he was determined to have sex with her and felt that to resist him any longer would be futile,” said the report.

Esparza told police that she didn’t tell her family anything, but told a Pomona College school nurse the next day. Medical records show she was given Ovral, an emergency contraceptive.

According to police reports, Esparza told one other person about what happened — her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Gianni Van.

Van became enraged and forced her and a group of friends weeks later to go back to the bar where she met Ramirez to identify him. Esparza testified that she believed that Van only wanted to confront Ramirez in public, not kill him.

Chained, tortured, hacked

After Esparza allegedly pointed Ramirez out, the group staged a car accident — crashing their van into Ramirez’s vehicle — and kidnapped him. Ramirez was chained up, tortured and hacked to death at a Costa Mesa transmission shop that was closed for the night.

At one point, Esparza was brought in from another room and forced to look at Ramirez, who she said was bloody but still alive.

Ramirez’s body, wrapped in green shop towels, was ditched on the dirt shoulder of Sand Canyon Road in Irvine. He was found on April 16, 1995, Easter Sunday.

‘Feared for my life’

Esparza explained her side of the situation on her blog.

“I was trapped. I was outnumbered by four older and bigger people. … I was miles away from home, late at night in a non-residential area. I had no car and I didn’t even know how to drive. I feared for my life and felt that the only thing I could do was submit.

“I had to stay quiet.”

In court testimony, Esparza said she didn’t feel morally responsible for Ramirez’s death, although she admitted her actions unintentionally led to his murder.

After her arrest, Esparza cooperated with prosecutors and testified against her co-defendants in a Santa Ana courtroom. Despite proclaiming her innocence, Esparza accepted a plea deal to a reduced charge of voluntary manslaughter.

Van, who masterminded the slaying, was sentenced to life without parole. Also convicted were Shannon Gries, who received 25 years to life, and Diane Tran, who received four years. Her husband, Kody, who also was present, killed himself in an unrelated police standoff.

Helping others now

Since her release from the California Institute for Women in Corona eight years ago, Esparza has been working for a nonprofit that helps men and women transition from prison to society. She also has published on the subject of incarcerated women, spoken at conferences and colleges and become a certified trainer for professionals treating addiction.

“She has, in other words, devoted herself to helping others. In particular, she has devoted herself to helping people in desperate need of assistance — women dealing with incarceration, substance abuse, trauma, violence and the challenges posed by release from prison,” wrote her criminal attorney Jack Earley, who is trying to get Esparza’s conviction overturned under a new law that more narrowly defines what can be charged as murder.

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