Crime & Safety

Trial Date For Missing Nursing Student Murder Case To Be Determined

Giselle Esteban, 28, of Union City is ordered to stand trial for the murder of Michelle Le.

A Union City woman ordered to stand trial for the killing of her former friend is scheduled to appear in court Friday morning.

Authorities believe Giselle Esteban, 28, is responsible for the killing of 26-year-old Michelle Le, a nursing student from San Mateo who disappeared from a Hayward hospital for four months before her body was found in a remote area near Sunol and Pleasanton.

Giselle Esteban, 28, entered a plea of not guilty to one count of murder when she last appeared in court Jan. 20, one month after an Alameda County criminal grand jury indicted her on an identical murder charge after a three-day hearing.

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She is to appear at the Rene C. Davidson Alameda County Courthouse in Oakland at 9 a.m. Friday.

Esteban and Le had both attended high school in San Diego but Le’s family and friends have said they had discontinued their friendship years ago.

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Le was last seen alive around 7 p.m. on May 27 at Kaiser in Hayward where she attended clinical rotations as part of her curriculum at Samuel Merritt University.

After numerous searches for Le, Esteban was arrested Sept. 7 – more than a week before Le’s body was found – based on DNA evidence and cell phone records that Hayward police said linked Esteban to Le’s murder.

Transcripts from the grand jury’s hearing revealed that prosecutors believe Esteban stalked Le and blamed Le for her broken relationship with Scott Marasigan, the father of her daughter.

While Marasigan said he had briefly dated Le, he said he developed a more intimate relationship with Esteban, according to reports.

Here are some details from those transcripts:

  • Prosecutors said Esteban did not want Marasigan to have “any sort of contact at all” with Le and would threaten him and state consequences that could happen if he continued to see Le.
  • Text messages sent from Esteban to Marasigan (as reported by The Hayward Daily Review) were as follows:
    • Feb. 18: “If you aren’t sorry for anything you have done with that whore and not willing to make things right for [our daughter’s] sake, then no, I’m not sorry for the consequences your actions have brought you both. You dug your own graves.”
    • Feb. 25: “FYI, you pushed me into insanity with you putting whores before your own family. You should have loved [our daughter] and I more, but you loved sex and attention more. Those two are exactly what you are going to get now. You reap what you sow.”
    • March 2: “And Michelle has dug her own grave by being a homewrecker and a whore. She won’t be an issue for much longer.”
    • May 29: “Where’s Michelle?”  [Read all of the texts here
  • A prosecutor said circumstantial evidence like Le’s blood and hair indicate that Esteban assaulted Le in Kaiser Hayward’s parking lot then placed her in Le’s car where Le continued to bleed.
  • Marasigan described his relationship with Esteban as volatile and "was very manipulative and kind of used that as a power play."
  • Marasigan filed a temporary restraining order against Esteban a few days before Le’s disappearance and that Esteban "was exhibiting unstable behavior" in those days leading up to Le going missing.

Esteban is being held at Santa Rita Jail on no bail. She is said to have given birth to a second child while she was in custody, but the child's father's name has not been disclosed.


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