A man deported to Mexico and later extradited to the United States after DNA evidence connected him to a 2002 cold case has been convicted of killing a Washington state woman and raping three others.
A Pierce County jury found Miguel Urbano-Vazquez guilty Tuesday of aggravated first-degree murder in the rape and strangling death of 39-year-old Sharon Van Gilder, whom he allegedly met at a Tacoma bar 24 years ago, The News Tribune reported.
Jurors also convicted him of first-degree rape with a deadly weapon and second-degree rape in connection with attacks on three other women in Tacoma during the same year.
Prosecutors said Van Gilder was the first victim in a series of violent sexual assaults carried out between March and October 2002, according to The News Tribune.
The mother of two was last seen that March leaving the Golden Rooster Tavern with Urbano-Vazquez and another man.
Several hours later, investigators found her naked and badly beaten on a county road. Prosecutors said DNA from Urbano-Vazquez was recovered from her body.
Authorities said the attacks continued in the months that followed.
In June, Urbano-Vazquez allegedly picked up a 34-year-old unhoused woman who was hitchhiking toward Seattle. He took her to a garage, struck her in the head with a wrench and raped her while she was bleeding, prosecutors said.
Two months later, prosecutors said, he and two other men assaulted and beat a 29-year-old woman at that same garage.
Then, in October, Urbano-Vazquez and a younger man allegedly picked up a 40-year-old woman at a bar, cut her throat and raped her in an alley, The News Tribune reported.
It took investigators roughly a decade to connect him to Van Gilder’s death and the other attacks. DNA testing matched him to evidence from the crime scenes in 2012, and Pierce County issued an arrest warrant that October.
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By then, however, investigators discovered that the suspected serial rapist had already been deported to Mexico, the FBI said.
Officials have not disclosed when he was deported or why.
His location remained a mystery until investigators tracked him down in 2019.
In March 2023, FBI agents arrested Urbano-Vazquez in Chimalhuacán, about 22 miles east of Mexico City. He was extradited to Pierce County last year to face trial for the decades-old crimes.
More than 20 years after the attacks, the surviving victims testified in court, describing hours of captivity and sexual assaults involving multiple men, KOMO News reported.
Prosecutors told the outlet that the other men implicated in some of the attacks have never been identified or arrested.
Van Gilder’s family thanked the surviving victims for coming forward, saying their testimony played an important role in securing the guilty verdict.
“We hugged them, told them we loved them, told them that it wasn’t their fault, and thanked them for being so brave to tell their stories,” Sharon’s cousin Brenda Doty told KOMO News.
“Every one of them said, ‘We’ve always prayed for you too, that we would get justice.’”
Following the verdict, Doty said the family was relieved that “this monster can never hurt anybody again.”
Urbano-Vazquez is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 11. He faces life in prison without the possibility of parole.
