The trial of 28-year-old Giselle Esteban, accused of stalking and killing nursing student Michelle Le, began in Oakland this week: Michelle Le slaying defendant on trial.Le was last seen during a class break at her nursing school in Hayward. Her disappearance set off a massive search before her skeletal remains were found ten days later off a rural path in Sunol Canyon.
According to prosecutors, Esteban murdered Le, her former high school friend, because she believed Le was having a romantic relationship with the father of her child. Prosecutors presented a particularly damning series of text message that illustrated Esteban was enraged and obsessed:
The prosecutor says in the days before May 27, 2011, "Giselle was so enraged that she began to essentially hunt down Miss Le."Authorities say blood and hair evidence suggests that Esteban assaulted and killed Le in the parking lot at the hospital facility, then placed Le into her own car before disposing of her body. More here: Murder Trial Begins For Death of Nursing Student Michelle Le.
Ford said, "We intend to prove that Giselle Esteban had become successful and actually stalked Michelle to the Kaiser facility in Hayward, attacked her in the parking lot, threw her body into Michelle's car and drove her away from Hayward, ultimately out to the Pleasanton-Sunol Valley Road area, and ultimately, through sort of a makeshift grave, buried Michelle's
body out there."
Fellow prosecutor Robert Warren told the grand jury that text messages that Esteban sent to Marasigan "show that this hatred, this obsession (about Michelle Le) that was within Miss Esteban was continuous from November of 2010 until May 27, 2011."
In her text messages Esteban said Le "will pay with her life" and "would not be a problem for much longer," Warren told the panel.