A jury in Pierce County, Washington has convicted Miguel Angel Urbano-Vazquez of aggravated first-degree murder in the 2002 rape and strangulation of Sharon Van Gilder, closing a case that stretched across two decades and two countries after the suspect was deported to Mexico, later captured abroad, and extradited back to the United States to face trial.
Van Gilder, a 39-year-old mother of two, was last seen leaving a bar in Tacoma with Urbano-Vazquez and another man in March 2002, according to the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office. Hours later, her naked and beaten body was found along a rural road in Spanaway, southeast of Tacoma. She had been strangled.
Prosecutors say Van Gilder’s murder was the first in a string of violent sexual assaults Urbano-Vazquez carried out between March and October 2002. He was convicted not only of her murder but also of raping three other women in the Tacoma area that same year.
The FBI’s Seattle field office says Urbano-Vazquez was deported to Mexico sometime after the killing. The Pierce County Prosecutor’s Office says a breakthrough came in 2012, when DNA testing linked the 2002 rape and murder of Van Gilder to three other nearby rapes. Urbano-Vazquez was captured abroad in 2023 and extradited in 2025, when investigators were finally able to collect a DNA sample and match it to the 2002 evidence.
A jury found him guilty on Nov. 3. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 11. Under Washington law, aggravated murder carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
A Family Waits Nearly 25 Years
Van Gilder’s cousin, Brenda Doty, told Fox News Digital the conviction brought overwhelming relief after years of sleepless nights.
“I’d wake up in the middle of the night thinking about it,” Doty said. “She didn’t deserve that.”
Doty remembers her cousin as close family and a hero who once saved Doty’s own daughter from drowning in a lake.
“[Sharon] jumped into the water, swam over there, dove underneath and pulled her up. She saved my daughter’s life,” Doty said. “My daughter was 8 years old, and she’s 40 now.”
Doty believes the full scope of Urbano-Vazquez’s crimes may never be known, given the years he spent in Mexico after his deportation.
“I’m sure [from the time] when he was in Mexico, there are more [victims],” she said. “He’s such a violent, violent person.”
Doty also praised the three survivors whose testimony helped secure the conviction, recalling how she and her cousin comforted them after they left the courtroom.
“The gals that testified, they were so brave to come. Now this is 24 years ago, their stories were heartbreaking and they came in and put themselves in front of juries,” Doty said. “When each one left the courtroom, my cousin and I went out and hugged them and told them that we loved them. It wasn’t their fault. We thanked them because their testimonies were key.”
Doty called the guilty verdict a hard-won victory and a message to other families still waiting for answers in unsolved cases.
“So many people had been part of this and it was a win, and it feels good to have a win,” Doty said. “If there anybody out there with a cold case, don’t give up.”
