Mexican professor accused in death of her alleged rapist pleads guilty

Norma Patricia Esparza, a psychology professor, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in a deal with prosecutors for the 1995 killing of a man she says raped her.

The woman, 43, entered the plea in Orange County Superior Court in exchange for a seven-year prison sentence and an agreement to testify in the trial of two other suspects in the killing, said defense attorney Jack Earley.

Authorities charged four people, including Esparza, with the 1995 murder of Gonzalo Ramírez, who Esparza has said raped her after she met him at a bar when she was a college student in Southern California.

Prosecutors contend Esparza pointed Ramírez out to her Vietnamese ex-boyfriend Gianni Van, who, along with two others, followed Ramírez in a van, rear-ended him, and attacked and kidnapped him. Ramírez was beaten and hacked to death with a meat cleaver and his body was dumped in Irvine, reports the Los Angeles Times.

Esparza told a grand jury that she never meant for Ramírez to be killed and that Van forced her to point him out after she told him about the rape, according to the paper. In fact she says that she learned that Ramírez had died two months after the incident, when Van showed up at her house to force her to marry. In the United States, a spouse can not declare against his/her partner.

Esparza obtained a doctorate in psychology and worked as a consultant for the World Health Organization in Europe. She was arrested on October 17, 2012 at Logan airport in Boston when she traveled to the United States.

She was taken to Orange County prison, where she is called by a number, 2797358, and spends 23 hours a day in a cell that measures 12 by 9 feet.

The woman, who is a mother of a four-year-old child, was born in Mexico and moved with her family to the United States as a child. She says she was raped by her father since she was five years old. Tired of being abused, she decided to study far from home, so she obtained a scholarship to attend Exeter Academy in New Hampshire.

(With information from AP)