A Pierce County jury 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 took nearly a quarter century to resolve after the suspect was deported to Mexico, later captured abroad and extradited back to Washington state.
Van Gilder, 39, 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, badly beaten body was found along a rural road in Spanaway, southeast of Tacoma. She had been strangled.
Prosecutors said her killing was the first in a string of violent sexual assaults that continued in the Tacoma area between March and October 2002. Urbano-Vazquez was deported to Mexico sometime after the murder, according to the FBI Seattle field office.
The case stalled for years until DNA testing in 2012 linked the Van Gilder murder to three other nearby rapes. Urbano-Vazquez was captured abroad in 2023 and extradited to the United States in 2025, when investigators were finally able to collect a DNA sample and compare it to evidence from 2002, according to the Pierce County Prosecutor’s Office.
A jury found him guilty on Nov. 3 of aggravated first-degree murder in Van Gilder’s death, along with rape charges connected to attacks on three other women in the Tacoma area that same year. He is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 11. Under Washington law, a conviction for aggravated murder 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 brought overwhelming relief after more than two decades of unanswered questions.
“I’d wake up in the middle of the night thinking about it,” Doty said. “She didn’t deserve that.”
Doty described Van Gilder, a mother of two, as a close family member who once dove into a lake to save Doty’s then-8-year-old daughter from drowning during a family outing. “My daughter was 8 years old, and she’s 40 now,” Doty said.
Doty said she believes the scope of Urbano-Vazquez’s crimes likely extends beyond the cases prosecuted in Washington. “I’m sure [from the time] when he was in Mexico, there are more [victims],” she said, adding, “He’s such a violent, violent person.”
She also praised the three women whose testimony helped secure the conviction on the rape charges. “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. She recalled that after each woman left the courtroom, she and Van Gilder’s family embraced them. “We thanked them because their testimonies were key in getting the guilty plea.”
Doty said the outcome offers encouragement to other families still waiting on unsolved cases. “So many people had been part of this and it was a win, and it feels good to have a win,” she said. “If there anybody out there with a cold case, don’t give up.”
