The Nurse To Murderer Pipeline Is Real…
Michelle Lee was born on October 12th, 1984 in San Diego, California to father Son Lee. Three years later, her younger brother Michael was born. Michelle’s parents were Vietnamese immigrants who had fled their homeland following the war in the ’60s and ’70s. They traveled in an open boat across the South China Sea and spent months in a refugee camp before finally making it to San Diego.
At first, they knew very little about American culture, but in a relatively short amount of time, they adapted and built a stable life for themselves. Michelle grew up surrounded by a large extended family, many of whom went on to become doctors and lawyers. Michelle’s mom, who hasn’t been publicly named, by all accounts, was the perfect mother.
She worked as a nurse practitioner, but was always present and raised Michelle and her brother with constant love and care. Michelle admired her mother in every way and wanted to follow in her footsteps. From a young age, she hoped to become a nurse just like her. In 1994, when Michelle was just 10 years old, her mother was diagnosed with cancer.
She chose not to tell her husband or any of her family. She believed it would affect her children. Her and her husband promised that their kids would have a stable childhood and nothing like what they had gone through, so she kept her diagnosis a secret. One of Michelle’s favorite childhood memories involved her favorite bedtime story.
This was a Vietnamese folktale called Woman on the Moon. The story follows a woman who drinks an elixir of life and becomes weightless. She is lifted into the sky and carried to the moon, far, far away from the people that she loves, where she is destined to spend her immortal life alone. Michelle’s mother would tell her children to look up at the moon and that if they look closely enough, the surface looked like a woman with long, dark hair.
Michelle was the oldest of her 15 cousins. According to her cousin Christine, Michelle was a role model growing up. She naturally took on responsibility, especially when it came to looking after her younger brother. Even though they were only 3 years apart, Michael often saw Michelle as a second mother. For a while, life felt stable, but in 1999, everything changed.
That Thanksgiving, the entire family gathered for dinner. Shell’s mother was completely fine, but just days later on December 1st, Michelle and Michael were hit with devastating news that their mother had succumbed to cancer. Loss came as a shock to the entire family. After her mother’s death, Michelle had to step up even more.
With the children still young and needing support, Sunly moved the family in with his sister who lived about 15 minutes away. Christine was excited to have her cousins living with them. Michelle was always there for Christine during her many milestones in adolescence. She helped her write her first love letter, took her to the mall to get her eyebrows done for the first time, and taught her how to do her makeup.
They even started their first job together at Rubio’s Coastal Grill. People would sometimes call Christine mini Michelle. Christine later described her experience growing up with Michelle saying, “She seemed to live as though she knew the secret that life was short and precious, that relationships mattered most, and everything else was just stuff.
Most people don’t reach that realization until much later, but Michelle, she always knew. Michelle was joyful, carefree, light-hearted, beautiful inside and out. She laughed easily, joked often, forgave liberally, and gave constantly without expecting anything in return. She loved to shop. She was your best bargain shopper and had a seriously awesome, fabulous closet.
She loved to dance and going out with her friends. She loved to eat and then judge all restaurants on Yelp. She loved to read. She had three tattoos, a compass, a sparrow, and her mom’s signature on her left breast over her heart. She hated heels and always opted for sandals or boots. She would loan her friends anything they needed or wanted, whether it a car to get to a job interview or a scarf on a cold day.
She gave and gave, and even took her passion for helping and put it toward a career in nursing. Michelle attended Mount Carmel High School. She was known for being kind to other students and was fairly popular, but she always remained humble. One day she noticed a student named Giselle Duyag Esteban sitting alone at a lunch table.
Michelle walked over and invited her to sit with her. Giselle accepted. Eventually they became best friends, though at the time Michelle had no way of knowing that this friendship would one day cost her her life. Giselle was quiet and introverted and Michelle helped bring her out of her shell. Eventually Michelle included her in family gatherings and went out of her way to make sure she never felt left out.
Giselle came from a Filipino immigrant family and Michelle and Giselle bonded as they both felt they were raised in similar environments as well. By the time they graduated high school in 2002, the two were inseparable. It was Michelle’s lifelong dream to become a nurse, and over time Giselle decided to pursue the same path. For graduation, the pair applied to college for their pre-reqs so they could later get into nursing school.
Both Michelle and Giselle decided to move north to the San Francisco Bay Area. Giselle was accepted into San Francisco State University where Michelle was accepted to San Jose State University. Michelle planned to later transfer to Giselle’s school so they could be closer. The spring semester of 2003, Michelle and Giselle were together once again.
There Giselle introduced Michelle to many of her friends. One of those friends was Scott Morasigan. The two briefly saw each other for about a month, but Scott remained in Michelle’s circle only as a friend. Later that year, Giselle and Scott began seeing each other more frequently and eventually their relationship turned romantic.
Michelle was so happy that they were dating. Around the same time, Michelle landed a job at Turner Construction as an accounting clerk, and she also found love with her new boyfriend Tommy. But soon the relationship between the best friends turned rocky over a complete misunderstanding. Giselle had thought Scott had slept with Michelle, which wasn’t true, but Michelle had kept a secret from her.
She was pregnant and planned to not continue with her pregnancy. She had her own reasons for not sharing this with Giselle, but she did confide in Scott about it. When Giselle eventually found out, she became furious. She believed that Michelle had slept with Scott and became pregnant with his baby. Michelle tried to explain what really happened, but Giselle refused to listen and broke up with Scott.
By the spring of 2005, Giselle found out that she was pregnant with Scott’s baby. For the sake of their unborn child, the pair reconciled. Giselle decided to take a break from her studies to focus on her health and the new baby. On Halloween of 2005, Giselle gave birth. By the summer of 2008, the relationship between Giselle and Scott ended for good.
The two began sharing custody of their young daughter. Giselle blamed Michelle for her failed relationship and cursed her. Years that followed, Giselle attended therapy and during one of the sessions, she asked for both Michelle and Scott to be present so she could clear the air and find some sense of closure. It wasn’t easy for Michelle, but for her former best friend, she was willing to sit through what was emotionally painful for her to do.
Scott said therapy didn’t do any good and Giselle still hated Michelle. Even so, Michelle was still willing to do anything to clear out the tension between them so they could get back to being best friends again. Two psychiatric evaluations were also conducted on Giselle in the summer of 2010, both of which documented a history of depression.
In one reported incident, a friend claimed to have found an empty bottle of antidepressants near Giselle while she was asleep. Giselle denied ever attempting an overdose. Despite these concerns, the evaluations concluded that she was not considered a danger to herself or to others at the time. By August of 2010, Michelle had completed her prerequisites for nursing school.
She got accepted into Samuel Merritt University’s accelerated nursing program, which would allow her to get her bachelor’s in nursing in 1 year instead of 2. This is a demanding program academically and very competitive, but Michelle made the cut. One of the first people she shared the news with was Giselle, but Giselle still held on to her resentment.
Despite Michelle’s willingness to reconcile, Giselle’s insecurities prevented that from happening. It later came to light that Giselle repeatedly called and harassed Michelle. By early 2011, Michelle had given up hope and tried to avoid Giselle altogether. Michelle was extremely busy now. In the morning, she attended university classes.
In the afternoon, she worked shifts at Kaiser Permanente. She still put in a lot of effort to keep in touch with her friends and family. Michelle’s cousin Christine was also planning to move in with her for her new job, but that would never happen. By May of 2011, now 26-year-old Michelle was working in the maternity ward. She was only 6 months away from her graduation.
On the night of Friday, May 27th, Michelle had her final evaluation with her assistant professor and instructor Lori Rosa. Michelle’s last evaluation hadn’t gone perfectly, so she was feeling a bit uneasy as she wanted to graduate with straight A’s. But Michelle also had exciting things that she was looking forward to. Memorial Day weekend was just around the corner and she had already made plans with friends to visit Reno. At 6:55 p.m.
, Michelle told one of her colleagues that she was going to grab some medicine from her car, which was parked in the hospital’s garage. To get there, she would have to take a pedestrian bridge from the hospital to her car and then up to the third floor in your back corner. Shortly after a hospital security guard notified Lori that Michelle had not signed out from the maternity ward.
It was completely out of character for Michelle. Lori searched the ward and left Michelle a voicemail, but she was still unaware that anything was seriously wrong. At around 9:00 p.m., the maternity students were wrapping up their final shift. Lori gathered everyone together for evaluations. Michelle wasn’t there. Last time anyone had seen her was just before 7:00 p.m.
before she said she was headed to her car. Lori asked a security guard to accompany her and the two went to check on Michelle’s car. When they reached her usual spot, her white Honda CRV wasn’t there. Moments later, Michelle’s car suddenly screeched back into the garage. Lori began waving and it slammed on its brakes for just a moment, but then immediately reversed back, almost struck another vehicle, and drove away.
At this point, Lori strongly doubted that Michelle was the one driving this car. By 10:00 p.m. Lori contacted the Hayward Police Department and reported that Michelle may have been abducted. Inspector Fraser Ritchie was handed the case. The officers at the scene noted that most of Michelle’s belongings had been left behind in the hospital break room.
The only thing she had taken with her was her cell phone, suggesting that Michelle hadn’t left willingly. By Saturday morning, there were still no signs of Michelle. Her friends spent an entire night calling and texting her, but none of them received a response. Everyone who spoke with the police just stressed how much this behavior was out of character for Michelle.
Investigators discovered that Michelle’s car was equipped with LoJack, a vehicle recovery system. By 9:00 a.m. on Saturday, they located Michelle’s car parked in a townhouse complex on Ponderosa Court, just half a mile from the hospital. The car was locked and not damaged. It was parked normally and at first glance, everything inside appeared almost normal.
Cuz the police didn’t have a warrant, they could only look through the windows, which were tinted. There were, however, some unusual details. Fresh grass was in the tailgate. They also noticed what appeared to be blood stains in the car. Finally, they were able to get it towed for forensic analysis. Investigators then returned to the parking lot where Michelle’s car had originally been parked and noticed blood on the ground near the spot.
Michelle’s friends had already begun handing out missing persons flyers. Michelle was described as Vietnamese, standing 5’6 and weighing about 120 lb with a tattoo of her mother’s signature on her left chest. She was last seen at Kaiser Permanente Hospital wearing white scrubs. Investigators also requested the security footage from the parking garage.
Since the recordings were being stored in an offsite data facility, all that could be done was to put in a request and wait for the footage to be sent. In the 15 hours since Michelle had gone missing, her friends and family had sent over 100 texts and calls with no response. But by 12:45 p.m., they started receiving strange text messages from Michelle’s phone.
The messages claimed to be Michelle, said she was fine, and that she wasn’t missing, and that she just needed some time alone. She also explained that her phone had been acting weird and that the flood of messages had drained her battery. By 2:00 p.m., the texts stopped all of a sudden. Inspector Richie also texted Michelle directly that there was an active investigation and that she needed to respond immediately, but she didn’t.
Her behavior made no sense. She didn’t call a single loved one. She also replied to her boyfriend Tommy with, “Who is this? I don’t have your number in my contacts.” Tommy’s number was one that Michelle knew by heart. Michelle’s friends were convinced that someone else was using her phone. Investigators had also obtained the parking garage footage.
They began combing through more than 100 hours of video across 330 camera angles. Eventually, they did find Michelle. She was seen briskly walking across the footbridge towards the parking lot. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary. She wasn’t being followed or chased, but she did appear to be in a hurry, assumedly because she had only had a short break and planned to return quickly.
Unfortunately, the main camera covering Michelle’s parking spot was recently installed and was not set to record. Michelle was walking towards her car at around 6:55 p.m. on Friday night. Her vehicle exited the parking garage at approximately 7:17. It then returned briefly at 9:06, but when Lori Rozsa waved at the white Honda CRV, the vehicle suddenly stopped before rushing out again.
After searching inside Michelle’s car, investigators found an ID badge partially shoved under the front passenger seat. It did not belong to Michelle. Instead, it belonged to a woman named Elaine San Augustine from Samuel Merritt University who was an adjunct instructor. Inspector Richie showed the badge to Lori who said she didn’t recognize the woman.
After further checking, however, it was discovered that Elaine was scheduled to begin working at Kaiser Permanente as a new instructor. The time Michelle went missing, Elaine was supposedly on vacation in Hawaii. In addition, there was blood throughout the vehicle on the front passenger seat, along the door frame, in the back seat, and across the floorboards.
The volume and the spread of the blood suggested that Michelle had been violently attacked and hadn’t survived. They couldn’t immediately confirm that it was her blood. It was still awaiting testing. The forensic team also collected hair samples and lifted fingerprints from inside the car that were also sent for testing.
For Michelle’s friends and family, this was devastating. The hope that she still might be alive was beginning to fade. So far, there were two major leads: the security footage and the ID found inside Michelle’s car. Still, investigators needed more leads to actually move the case forward. Inspector Richie began compiling a list of Michelle’s closest friends and interviewed each one.
Nearly everyone had nothing but positive things to say about Michelle, except for Giselle. One friend described Michelle and Giselle’s relationship as tumultuous. Inspector Richie visited Giselle at her apartment in Union City, around a 25-minute drive from Michelle’s home, and only 10 minutes from the hospital.
Giselle was apparently unconcerned about the fact that Michelle had gone missing. She also told the inspector that Michelle wasn’t the perfect person that everyone else claimed that she was. In addition, when the inspector asked if their relationship was tumultuous, Giselle almost laughed. She explained that they were best friends until Michelle’s true colors shown.
She alleged that Michelle, her best friend, slept with her fiance. In light of this, Inspector Richie asked Giselle for an interview. At the station, Giselle explained that the three of them were really close in the fall of 2003, but Giselle was uncomfortable with Michelle being around her boyfriend, Scott, since the two of them had a past and, according to her, flirting with each other.
She then explained how Michelle kept her pregnancy a secret from her and said it was Scott’s child, but again, there was no evidence that Michelle and Scott ever had a physical relationship, even in the time when they were casually seeing each other. About a year after Giselle got back together with Scott because of their baby, she discovered that Scott and Michelle had started talking again.
Although Scott insisted that the relationship was strictly platonic, Giselle wasn’t comfortable with it. She gave him an ultimatum, either choose her and their child or Michelle. In the end, Scott chose to cut off contact with Michelle. Despite this, Giselle and Scott still broke up less than 3 years later. After hours at the station, Giselle grew visibly tired.
She was also 3 months pregnant at the time, which she said was also Scott’s baby. With no reason to detain her, she was allowed to leave. Inspector also interviewed Scott, who explained how it was his platonic connection with Michelle that destroyed the relationship with Giselle. He was also still in touch with Michelle, but the last time he heard from her was on May 28th, the day after she had gone missing.
He had gotten a text from Michelle’s phone that said she was on her way to Reno and putting out fires because people thought she was missing. Scott tried to get an explanation, but Michelle, or the person pretending to be Michelle, never responded. By now, the forensic tests had also come back. The blood in the car in the parking lot was a match for Michelle.
This was now a homicide case. Police only informed Michelle’s family about this, but never revealed any other details. That fact alone was disturbing for Michelle’s family. Allegedly, they were treated harshly at the police station. One officer allegedly told Michelle’s brother Michael that he needed to get comfortable with the idea that his sister was probably dead.
Michael later reported, “We were frustrated with the lack of information.” But despite everything, the family refused to give up. They continued to believe and hold on hope that Michelle was still alive and safe. Speaking to reporters outside the Hayward Police Department on June 7th, 2011, Michelle’s father Sonny said, “We will continue to hope and pray for her return until there is conclusive and definitive proof that she is dead.
We believe that Michelle is still alive and needs to be found. If you call it a murder case, you have to have a body, but there is no body.” The family also took matters into their own hands. They launched a website, michelleleemissing.com, dedicated to gathering leads and spreading awareness.
Billboards went up and Michelle’s missing person flyers appeared everywhere. A $65,000 reward was also offered for information about Michelle’s whereabouts. $45,000 out of that was donated by Turner Construction where Michelle had worked for nearly 5 years. The family also helped create a Facebook page.
That page quickly gained popularity and people all over the world were doing what they could to help Michelle. The same time, everybody feared, “What if Michelle were actually dead?” Christine said, “There’s the agony of waiting. If she never came home, what would we do?” On June 9th, 2011, a candlelight vigil was held in the same parking lot where Michelle had last been seen.
Members of the community gathered alongside Michelle’s friends, some of whom had traveled from Vietnam to attend. The family’s experience with the Hayward Police Department was rough. They blamed detectives for not sharing enough information, even suspected that the case wasn’t given proper attention because Michelle wasn’t an adult.
Eventually, the family hired their own private investigator, and soon after, detectives began collaborating with Michelle’s family. Michelle’s cell phone records were also analyzed. Based on that information, a large volunteer search party swept through Niles Canyon and the surrounding areas. In the search for Michelle, a large bone was found.
Testing revealed that the bone was indeed human, but it did not belong to Michelle. Meanwhile, Inspector Richie viewed the security footage again and again, and it was then he noticed something bizarre. It appeared that someone had been waiting for Michelle near her car, which caught her off guard.
She seemed to sway slightly, but later she approached the vehicle. That’s likely where the attack happened. The blood found in the front doorway of Michelle’s car, along with the blood stains in the parking garage itself, supported this theory. Then there was the Samuel Merritt University ID belonging to Elaine St. Augustine. Since Elaine herself was confirmed to be vacationing in Hawaii at the time, it only made sense that someone else had stolen her ID.
Inspector Richie followed up on this lead and spoke with the program’s administrative assistant, Karen Casper. Karen explained that the last time she had seen Elaine’s ID was the day before Michelle went missing. Additionally, the hospital security system logged every door access using an ID badge, so the detectives could review when and where Elaine’s ID had been used.
Detectives combed through hours of footage to determine whether Elaine’s ID had actually been stolen from Karen’s office, and if so, how it happened. Well, at roughly 8:00 a.m. on May 26th, Karen unlocked and entered the front office. Not long after, a woman walked inside and sat down on the couch. She had dark hair and was wearing black leggings and a black long-sleeve shirt.
The woman introduced herself as a prospective student interested in the nursing program. She claimed she had an appointment with a student counselor. When Karen stepped out of her office to locate the counselor, the woman briefly walked inside. There was more than enough time to grab the ID from Karen’s desk, but before Karen could return, the woman had already stepped back out.
At one point, she looked directly into the camera. After reviewing the footage multiple times, Inspector Richie thought that the woman in the video looked very similar to, as I’m sure you might have guessed by now, Giselle. But they couldn’t say for sure. What they could confirm, however, was that the same woman used Elaine’s ID again later that evening after hours to access the classrooms.
Surveillance footage shows her attempting to open multiple locked doors. At one point, she appeared to flinch when she noticed someone nearby. She eventually entered a classroom where she was seen inspecting computers. In later footage, she appeared to be wearing white scrubs and was visibly holding what looked like a class roster.
Even though detectives strongly suspected that the woman was Giselle, they still found it hard to believe that a pregnant woman had overpowered Michelle. They suspected that Giselle was accompanied by someone, and Scott seemed like the most likely person. Inspector Richie planned to bring Scott in for another interview, but before he could do that, Scott called the station in a panic.
He told police that he had just found Michelle’s white iPhone tucked beneath a backseat floor mat of his car. This only worsened the suspicion of him. How did Michelle’s phone end up in Scott’s vehicle? In the second interview, Scott revealed a lot of information that helped explain Giselle’s deep animosity towards Michelle. He said he no longer had any relationship with Giselle and only contacted her when absolutely necessary, strictly in relation to court appearances and custody matters.
According to him, Giselle had been diagnosed with manic depression with psychotic features, and that she also suffered from bipolar disorder. Scott admitted that he had remained in contact with Michelle and even met up with her a few times. But Scott described his former relationship with Giselle as a nightmare.
In 2008, when the relationship ended for good, Giselle was granted custody along with a move-away order. Scott frequently traveled back and forth to San Diego just to see his daughter. Later, Giselle informed him that she was moving in with a new boyfriend and that their daughter would be living with him also. Scott strongly opposed of this and in November of 2009, he filed for full custody.
By April of 2010, Giselle had broken up with her new boyfriend and returned to Northern California. Scott explained that he attempted to reconcile with her during this period, but just like before, it didn’t work out. Around the same time, Giselle told Scott that she was pregnant again and was considering terminating the pregnancy.
She stressed that it was his baby, but Scott never believed that. According to Scott, Giselle struggled with serious mental health issues that made it nearly impossible for him to get through to her. He also stated that there were seven years of domestic incident reports involving Giselle. To give some context, in 2008, Giselle reportedly swallowed an excessive number of pills and physically attacked Scott.
There was a witness to this incident and Giselle was arrested. Later that same year, Scott himself was arrested after pushing Giselle through a doorway during an altercation. Their daughter was also present during the fight. Giselle also once destroyed Scott’s computer. Scott further claimed that Giselle would repeatedly threaten to remove herself from the earth if he didn’t respond to her calls or messages.
On one occasion, she reportedly called him crying, begging him to come over. There were also incidents where Giselle allegedly laid down in the middle of the road and Scott would have to pull her out of traffic to prevent her from being hit by a car. Still, Giselle would get Scott arrested at times, claiming that he was a woman beater and the police wouldn’t believe him since she had scars on her body which she allegedly inflicted herself.
According to another report, Scott told authorities that Giselle had threatened to use a knife on herself and her unborn child. There’s no official record of who was proven guilty in these altercations as these cases were never prosecuted. In addition, Scott provided investigators with numerous text messages, voicemails, and recorded conversations in which Giselle displayed extreme animosity towards Michelle and himself.
Scott explained that he had deliberately kept these messages as an ongoing effort to gain full custody of their child. Among the voice recordings was a voicemail from November of 2010 in which Giselle once again accused Scott of sleeping with Michelle. On February 17th, 2011, Giselle asked Scott to meet her at a coffee shop.
Scott agreed. At first, the meeting was calm, but then Giselle claimed that someone had a big problem with Michelle and that she was going to help this mystery person find her so they could disfigure her with acid or some sort of weapon. Scott was horrified and he made it clear that he didn’t want to engage in that conversation any further.
But instead of stopping, Giselle lashed out and threw coffee at him. Later, she begged for forgiveness, played the victim card, and said that she was deeply affected by what she described as Scott’s poor choices. That same night, Giselle sent Michelle a text which read, “If you were really anyone’s friend, mine or Scott’s, you would just off and leave my family alone, but all you are is a who has nothing better to do and follow me to San Francisco.
That’s all you’ll ever be, the who slept with other people’s men and brothers because no one wanted you. You aren’t my friend. You’re always just a parasite.” Another message was also sent to both Scott and Michelle which read, “You two really do deserve each other. I hope you get what you deserve.
You are both pathetic. You, Scott, with no dreams or goals and the others chasing after someone else’s dreams because she has none of her own. You’re both parasites. Michelle had better things to focus on at that point, so she ignored the text. The following day Giselle texted Scott telling him that this wouldn’t end until Michelle was gone.
She went on to claim that their daughter was already aware that Scott had chosen his her over her. She also complained that Scott hadn’t even given her a birthday present because according to her, he had spent his money on Michelle. But Giselle didn’t stop there. She also attempted to sabotage Michelle’s relationship with Tommy by messaging him directly and bringing up her version of the past involving Scott and Michelle.
Scott told investigators that Giselle repeatedly told him he should remove himself from this earth. She accused him of driving her into insanity and said that he would suffer for it. She also told him that he couldn’t protect Michelle and that she was actively planning both of their demises. One important detail to note is that although Scott did see Michelle during this period, he admitted that he always lied to Giselle when she asked about it.
In March of 2011, Giselle confronted Scott directly telling him that she had seen him meeting with Michelle. March 17th, she sent Scott a text that read, “FYI, she won’t pass her midterms.” On March 18th, Scott went to Giselle’s apartment to pick up some Girl Scout cookies. Giselle had been told to leave them outside as Scott wanted to avoid any confrontation, but she ignored that request and got into the passenger seat of his car instead.
Scott recorded that interaction. The one issue that I really really am having a hard time dealing with. That’s not what you said at all. Yes. Okay, well then fine. Starting from now, we are going to be honest about Michelle. Do you understand me? Whether you sleep with her, whether you share food with her, whether you talk to her, you will be honest WITH ME. LOOK AT ME.
YOU WILL BE HONEST WITH me regarding Otherwise, I will take you out. and yours. And you can take that to the grave with you. Why? Why? Because you lied about her so many times it’s hard to believe that she can sleep and walk away. You deserve to die for your lies as does she, and you will if you do it again.
This is your last warning. Why? Do you understand me? It’s your last warning. It should be noted, if you didn’t notice, that their daughter was in the car when she said all that stuff. To include a little child in such a discussion, you just don’t know exactly what kind of impact it might have on her. Giselle also asked Scott in the car if he loved her, and Scott blatantly said no.
Afterwards, Giselle started striking her face over and over again with her keys. Scott begged her to stop since their daughter was watching her. He even threatened to call the police. However, Giselle told him to do it and that the police would arrest him and not her. Sure enough, she was right and Scott was arrested.
The charges against him were dropped as they were in so many times in the past. On May 20th, 2011, Giselle went to Scott’s to pick up their daughter for a supervised visit. But even with a social worker there, things were far from smooth. Giselle walked right past him into Scott’s house where he lived with his parents. She made a fuss, but eventually left.
However, Scott noticed that his keys were missing. Two days later, Scott was woken up by his car alarm at around 8:00 a.m. He didn’t notice anything when he went to inspect his car, but as he was doing so, he was alarmed by his mother’s screaming voice. When Scott rushed inside, he saw Giselle.
And Giselle was not supposed to be there, but that didn’t seem to faze her. In fact, she was laughing. Scott demanded that she return his keys, but instead Giselle just laughed in his face and claimed that she didn’t have them. After she left, Scott realized that his keys weren’t the only thing that had been taken. His computer was gone as well.
After this, Scott decided to apply for a restraining order against Giselle. Later, Inspector Richie asked Scott whether he had any contact with Giselle around the time Michelle disappeared, and Scott said yes. On the night Michelle vanished at around 1:00 a.m., Giselle had texted him asking where Michelle was.
Scott didn’t respond as he was asleep. The following morning, Giselle was scheduled to pick up their daughter for a supervised visit. Giselle was once again brought into the police station for questioning. By this point, investigators believe she alone was connected to Michelle’s disappearance.
Giselle said that she had called Michelle multiple times leading up to the day she went missing. She reportedly had even sent her text messages, but never received a response. Inspector Richie asked her the reason for the text. Giselle claimed it was just to make sure Michelle was staying away from her daughter. She claimed that her daughter would mention Michelle every now and then, and that she had the impression Michelle was going to be her new mommy.
Inspector Richie asked for the call logs of her cell phone for evidence. Giselle became defensive and claimed she wouldn’t have any of that since she set her messages to auto delete. She only had messages that she manually saved. When asked what she did the day Michelle went missing, Giselle said that she went for a walk in the morning, volunteered at her daughter’s school, went home to rest for a while, and later around 4:15 p.m.
went to Kaiser Permanente, same location where Michelle had been working to ask about pregnancy coverage. Giselle claimed that she parked on the third floor because she was headed to the maternity ward. However, once inside, she realized that the member services department was closed. According to her, she briefly used the restroom and then left.
Giselle also admitted that she saw Michelle on the pedestrian bridge at around 6:30 p.m. Inspector Richie asked whether there had been a confrontation between them, Giselle became defensive and immediately asked for a lawyer. Inspector said they had surveillance footage and could review it to trace her movements and Giselle claimed that she didn’t remember the events clearly.
She said that she had been sleeping excessively and couldn’t remember much from that time period. She also attempted to blame this on her lithium medication, which she claimed she had stopped taking due to her pregnancy. When pressed, she said she didn’t know the reason why she had been prescribed it.
Despite all this, Giselle claimed that she had no idea Michelle worked at Kaiser Permanente. When asked what she did the following Saturday, Giselle said that she took her daughter to Chuck-E-Cheese. Shortly after saying this, she began texting on her phone and said she wanted to stop talking because a friend had advised her to do so.
After accessing her call logs, phone records, and obtaining a DNA swab, Giselle was allowed to leave. Authorities were also successful in getting a search warrant for her home and car. The detectives were clearly onto something, but they needed more evidence, and sure enough, they were about to get it. Giselle had made several calls to both Samuel Merritt University and Kaiser Permanente just days before Michelle had gone missing.
Inspector Richie reached out to both to inquire about the content of these calls. The school administrator from SMU later told investigators that she remembered a woman calling under the name Jamie. The caller sounded polite and friendly, but asked for Michelle’s home address. She claimed to be Michelle’s friend, yet she didn’t have the address herself.
The administrator refused to provide that information. When the woman called a second time, the administrator offered instead to pass her phone number onto Michelle. The caller, however, said that she was using someone else’s phone. The following day, May 26th, the same day Giselle stole Elaine’s ID, she called Kaiser Permanente and introduced herself as Michelle.
She claimed she had just started an internship and urgently needed to know the instructor’s name and where she was supposed to report. Giselle called again shortly afterwards asking the same questions. On her third call, she changed her identity once more. This time pretending to be a skilled lab instructor from SMU asking about nursing students and whether any of them would be reporting to the hospital that night.
Investigators had received another tip from a priest at All Saints Catholic Church in Hayward. May 26th, the priest had seen a young woman sitting alone on the patio outside his office wearing white medical scrubs. She appeared visibly distressed. The priest asked if she wanted to go into the confession room, the woman declined.
However, she told him she was seeking forgiveness for something she had not yet done. May 27th, the day Michelle went missing, Giselle once again called the hospital. This time pretending to be an instructor from SMU. She asked to speak with Michelle. However, the name she gave belonged to Michelle’s former instructor.
Giselle asked if Michelle was going to be at the hospital at 7:00 p.m. The person who answered the call knew that instructor and had no doubts that the caller was impersonating her. Giselle’s phone pinged inside the hospital’s parking garage on both May 26th and May 27th. On the 27th alone, her phone sent 91 messages between 3:11 p.m. and 7:12 p.m.
Both Michelle’s and Giselle’s phones also pinged at the same location on the 27th. At around 9:00 p.m., roughly around the time when Michelle’s car was last seen at Kaiser Permanente, Giselle texted a friend ask if he knew how to unlock an iPhone. She claimed that she had found a white iPhone at the hospital pharmacy.
The day after Michelle was officially reported missing, Giselle went to an Apple store during a supervised visit with her daughter accompanied by a social worker. Giselle told the Apple employee that her daughter had been playing with the phone and had accidentally locked it. Employee then helped her unlock the device.
The social worker, Giselle gave a different explanation. She claimed that the phone had been given to her by her brother and that she needed help setting it up at the Apple store. For leaving, Giselle asked the social worker to drive them to Chuck-E-Cheese’s. Around this time, Michelle’s family and friends began receiving text messages from Michelle’s phone.
Social worker said that Giselle seemed unusually focused on the phone throughout the drive. Around 3:00 p.m., both Michelle’s and Giselle’s phones pinged at the same Chuck-E-Cheese location. Not long after, Giselle claimed that she had left the stove on at home. She left the children behind with the social worker and returned roughly an hour later.
She came back, she no longer had the iPhone with her. During that same window of time, Giselle’s phone also pinged near Scott’s house, which meant that she had planted the phone in Scott’s car. Nonetheless, investigators retrieved several items from Giselle’s apartment searching for any clues or DNA traces that could provide solid ground for a conviction.
Giselle’s DNA was found on the turn signal of Michelle’s car. A strand of her hair was also found in the car and Michelle’s blood was discovered on one of Giselle’s shoes. This evidence was enough to arrest Giselle, but without a body, it is hard to guarantee a conviction. But leaving Giselle on the street was risky.
Investigators were concerned for the safety of Scott, his young daughter, and Michelle’s family. Around the same time, Giselle violated her restraining order by showing up at her daughter’s school. She even attempted to enter one of the classrooms. Scott immediately reported this to the police. Finally, on September 7th, 2011, nearly 3 months after Michelle’s disappearance, police arrested Giselle.
She didn’t even fight back. She didn’t argue. She showed no visible reaction at all, not even asking why she was being arrested. The arrest was confusing for Michelle’s family. They had no idea that Giselle was the primary suspect, and the idea that Michelle’s former best friend could be responsible for her disappearance and possible murder was almost impossible to process.
However, once investigators brought the family into the station and laid out all of the evidence, things began to make sense. Even then, Michelle’s family clung to hope. They still wanted to believe that she might be alive somewhere. They even increased the reward money to $100,000, but that hope was shattered on September 17th, 2011, 113 days after Michelle was first reported missing and 10 days after Giselle’s arrest.
One of the search teams combing through the canyon where Giselle’s phone had pinged on the night of May 27th, 2011, found a severely decomposed body near a large tree stump located next to a pair of white medical scrubs. The skeletal remains couldn’t be visually identified, so they were transported for examination.
By the evening of September 19th, the Alameda County Coroner’s Office officially confirmed the remains belonged to Michelle. However, examinations continued as investigators still needed to determine the cause of death. Unfortunately, due to the advanced state of decomposition, a definitive cause could never be confirmed.
That said, medical examiners concluded that Michelle had most likely been incapacitated by a sharp force injury, possibly from a knife. Meanwhile, Giselle gave birth in November of 2011 while in custody, 1 week before Thanksgiving. The child was not Scott’s and was placed in the custody of the child’s father. On December 15th, 2011, Giselle was formally indicted for first-degree murder.
She entered a plea of not guilty and her trial was scheduled to begin on September 17th, 2012. Giselle’s defense attorney was Andrea Auer, while the prosecution was led by District Attorney Butch Ford. DA Ford was tasked with combing through hundreds of pages of evidence to ensure justice for Michelle. Among that evidence were over 300 pages of text messages exchanged between Giselle and Scott in regards to Michelle.
The DA’s argument was that Giselle had harbored intense hatred towards Michelle for nearly 6 years. The FBI also recovered data from her laptop revealing numerous internet searches related to Michelle. Giselle had repeatedly searched for chemicals capable of causing a heart attack without leaving a detectable trace, how to locate someone who does not want to be found, how to follow someone without being caught, and where to purchase potassium chloride.
Giselle’s attorney, however, acknowledged that Giselle had killed Michelle, but argued that it was not first-degree murder and instead voluntary manslaughter. The defense claimed that Michelle had provoked Giselle, pushing her into committing the act. Defense also argued that Giselle’s text messages showed clear paranoia and psychosis, which they claimed impaired her judgment at the time of the killing.
The trial lasted 3 weeks. Michelle’s family and friends were present throughout the proceedings. Christine wrote about how difficult the trial was for them emotionally, saying, “Truth be told, the most exhausting parts of the trial are when the evidentiary facts are being excruciatingly repeated in bone-dry format, cold and clinical.
When the defense is painting a suspected murderer to be a saint, and our family has no choice but to listen on to their shameless attempts at garnering sympathy, including their callous and merciless attacks on who we love. They forget, I suppose, that we lost Michelle because she was murdered in cold blood. I suppose they forget that while they are defending a monster who has future dreams and life goals, it is because of her that Michelle will never get the chance to live out her future dreams, pursue her life goals, get married,
become a mother, spend holidays with her family, and laugh with her friends. Her short-living years were quickly and brutally ended, but I suppose they forget that. Eventually, a jury of six men and six women were unanimous on finding Giselle Esteban guilty of first-degree murder. On December 10th, 2012, she was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
She will be eligible for parole in 2029. Even though Giselle’s sentencing was 14 years ago from the date of this recording, the fact that she could be paroled 3 years from now feels far too soon. It’s not what’s right, but it’s it’s the most that they can do, and we we’re just glad that some form of justice has has been served.
Michelle was a beautiful, beautiful person, and I think we continue to feel her murder may have taken away her legacy or her her life, but she will never take away her murder will never take away her light, and she will never take away her legacy. In September of 2011, the same month Michelle’s death was officially confirmed, more than 100 people gathered for a candlelight vigil at the Samuel Merritt University in Oakland.
The vigil featured musical performances, and the lawn was adorned with posters, floral arrangements, and photo collages dedicated to Michelle. Her brother Michael shared, “Someday I will be reunited with my mom and Michelle, but until then, I need to live a life that would make them both proud of me.” Her cousin Christine also vowed to keep Michelle’s memory alive.
She said, “Words will never explain how much I miss her, and the pain will sit like a rock in stomach. Michelle will never be a mom. She will never be a nurse. She will never see her future. However, her memory and her name will see the future, and will continue to be honored.” SMU President Sharon Diaz announced that there would be a scholarship in Michelle’s honor, calling her the quintessential professional and then some.
There is no public information regarding her funeral services. Her cousin Christine remembered Michelle with the following heartfelt words. “She was a granddaughter, a daughter, a sister, a niece, a cousin, a friend, a puppy mom, and she is missed every day.” It’s very difficult to think of a case that even compares to Michelle Le’s story because the whole motive behind her murder is just so petty.
Giselle was jealous of Michelle’s relationship with the father of her child, and she was jealous that Michelle had met and exceeded her career goals in the very career path that she herself had failed at. If Michelle’s story resonated with you, then please click here to check out the story of Reagan Simmons-Hancock, an expectant mother who was thriving in all aspects of her life only to be murdered by a jealous woman who wanted the unborn baby that she was carrying inside of her.
