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NBC’s Dateline episode titled The Secret follows psychology professor Dr. Norma Patricia Esparza, who was found guilty of manslaughter in 2016 for the 1995 murder of Gonzalo Ramirez.
The synopsis of the Dateline episode states:
"Patricia Esparza believed she had escaped poverty and abuse, attending elite schools and becoming a respected psychology professor. But a dark secret comes back to haunt her when a determined investigator and prosecutor in Orange County work to solve a 20-year-old murder case."
More on this in our story.
Dateline: The Secret - Who is Norma Patricia Esparza and what crimes did she commit? Disturbing details of a psychology professor's crimes explored
As per Dateline, Patricia was born in southern Mexico and later came to California, US. She shared that her father used to abuse her when she was young, and she had no one to tell as she thought nobody could save her from it.
She began spending more time studying to avoid and ignore all the challenges in her early life, which resulted in her getting into Phillips Exeter Academy, New Hampshire, and later Pomona College. She was living a simple and quiet life until the night in 1995 when she met Gonzalo Ramirez at the El Cortez nightclub. They both exchanged their phone numbers, and Ramirez called Patricia the next morning. The morning turned out to be horrifying for Patricia, as she later stated that she was allegedly s*xually assaulted by Ramirez in her dorm room.
That was not all, as three weeks later, Ramirez’s body was found along a freeway in Irvine. Ramirez was initially reported to be kidnapped and was later found near the road with brutal injuries.
Detective Larry Montgomery from Irvine police department told Dateline:
"I've been to a lot of scenes in my career, but this one was a little more gruesome just because of the sheer amount of injury to a body. He was definitely hacked to death."
Initially, the police of Santa Ana had no clue who would have done that to Ramirez after interviewing his family and friends, but after finding a handwritten note in Ramirez’s room with two phone numbers and a name, Patty, they immediately called her.
Patricia then came to the police station and shared her side of the story about being assaulted by Ramirez and confiding this information to her ex-boyfriend, Geany van. The police then found out that Geany also owned a white Van and linked it to Ramirez’s kidnapping as he was kidnapped and taken in a white Van.
However, even after arresting Geany, they couldn’t keep him in as they later found out that Geany had married Patricia in Las Vegas, and now they couldn’t use her to testify against him. Due to this, the case remained unsolved for almost 15 years.
Dateline: The Secret - Police found new evidence linking Patricia to Ramirez’s murder
In the coming years, Patricia was living a seemingly happy life as she graduated and became a professor of psychology. After getting divorced from Geany, she married Jorge Mancillas and moved to France.
However, in the US, detective Dean Fulcher had not given up on solving the case. He re-interviewed everyone and found out through Nancy Luna that Patricia had pointed Ramirez out to Geany in the club. However, it was difficult for them to make Patricia speak as she was now in Europe, and they had to wait until she got back to the US.
In October 2012, Patricia came back to the US and was charged with first-degree murder. After months of keeping silent, she finally revealed that she had told Van about Ramirez and also identified him to Geany. She also knew about Van keeping Ramirez tied up at the Accurate Transmission shop.
When she refused two plea deals, Dian Tran, who co-owned the shop with her husband, Cody Tran, took a plea deal and revealed that Patricia was involved in the murder as she was always present when Geany was scheming to kidnap and kill Ramirez.
As per Dateline, Geany was sentenced to life imprisonment, and Patricia and the others involved in the murder pled guilty to the crime in 2016. The psychology professor was sentenced to six years in prison and was later released in 2018.
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