Murder of Michelle Le

Michelle Hoang Thi Le was a 26-year-old American nursing student of Vietnamese descent, born October 12, 1984. She grew up in the Rancho Peñasquitos neighborhood of San Diego with her younger brother, Michael, and graduated from Mt. Carmel High School in 2002. She went on to attend San Jose State University before transferring to San Francisco State University, and was studying nursing at Samuel Merritt University in Oakland, California, at the time of her death.

On May 27, 2011, Le disappeared from the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Hayward, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her white Honda SUV was found the following morning around 9am parked on Ponderosa Court, about half a mile from the medical center. In response to her disappearance, Le's family erected billboards and offered a reward for information about her whereabouts. Over the following four months, at least eight volunteer search efforts were conducted, some organized by the Klaas Kids Foundation, with a variety of missing persons organizations participating.

The eighth search effort located decomposed human remains in a remote canyon area on September 17, 2011. Two days later, on September 19, 2011, the Alameda County coroner's office positively identified the remains as those of Michelle Le.

Investigators suspected from early in the case that Le had been killed by someone she knew. Giselle Diwag Esteban, born February 4, 1984, of Union City, California, and a former friend of Le, was arrested on September 7, 2011, and charged with murder, even though Le's body had not yet been recovered at that time. Authorities cited DNA evidence, including blood stains found in Le's car and on Esteban's shoe, along with security video footage that placed Esteban in the area at the time Le disappeared. Esteban reportedly blamed Le for ending her relationship with her ex-boyfriend, with whom Esteban had a child, but she denied any involvement in Le's disappearance. Esteban was formally indicted on a murder charge on December 14, 2011.

Esteban entered a not guilty plea, and a trial date was set for September 17, 2012. On October 29, 2012, a jury convicted Esteban of first-degree murder. At sentencing on December 10, 2012, Esteban was given 25 years to life in prison. Esteban was pregnant at the time of Le's murder and gave birth while incarcerated; the child is in the custody of the father.