A jury in Pierce County has found Miguel Angel Urbano-Vazquez guilty of aggravated first-degree murder in the 2002 rape and strangulation of Sharon Van Gilder, a 39-year-old mother of two whose body was found along a rural road in Spanaway more than two decades ago.
Van Gilder 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 badly beaten body turned up on a roadside in Spanaway, southeast of Tacoma. Investigators determined she had been strangled.
Prosecutors said Van Gilder’s killing was the first in a string of violent sexual assaults carried out between March and October 2002. Urbano-Vazquez was later convicted of rape charges tied to attacks on three other women in the Tacoma area during that same year.
The case went cold for years after Urbano-Vazquez was deported to Mexico following the killing, the FBI’s Seattle office said. The break came in 2012, when the Pierce County Prosecutor’s Office said DNA testing linked the 2002 murder to three other nearby rapes. Urbano-Vazquez was captured abroad in 2023 and extradited to the United States in 2025, finally allowing investigators to collect a DNA sample for comparison against the 2002 evidence.
A jury convicted him on Nov. 3. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 11. Aggravated murder in Washington carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
A Cousin Remembers
Van Gilder’s cousin, Brenda Doty, told Fox News Digital the conviction brings overwhelming relief after nearly 25 years of waiting.
“I’d wake up in the middle of the night thinking about it,” Doty said. “She didn’t deserve that.”
Doty described Van Gilder as a close family member who once saved Doty’s young daughter from drowning in a lake during a family outing.
“We just had so much fun together, riding ponies and horses and playing in the barn,” Doty said. “[Sharon] jumped into the water, swam over there, dove underneath and pulled her up. She saved my daughter’s life. My daughter was 8 years old, and she’s 40 now.”
Doty said she believes Urbano-Vazquez’s history of violence likely extends further than what has been proven in court.
“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 women who testified about their own assaults during the trial.
“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 in getting the guilty plea.”
Doty said the verdict offers encouragement to other families still waiting on unresolved 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.”
You must be logged in to post a comment Login