A man convicted of raping and killing an American woman more than two decades ago, as well as attacking three other women, has been brought to justice after years of investigation.
Miguel Angel Urbano-Vazquez was found guilty Nov. 3 of aggravated first-degree murder in the 2002 rape and strangulation of Sharon Van Gilder, 39. Her body was found beside a rural road in Pierce County, Washington. Urbano-Vazquez had been deported to Mexico and was later extradited to the United States.
Van Gilder’s cousin, Brenda Doty, said the conviction brought enormous relief after nearly 25 years. “I’d wake up in the middle of the night thinking about it,” she said. “She didn’t deserve that.”
A mother of two, Van Gilder was close to her family. Doty remembers growing up together, riding ponies and horses and playing in the barn. She also recalls Van Gilder saving her eight-year-old daughter from drowning during a family outing. Her daughter is now 40.
Van Gilder was last seen leaving a Tacoma bar 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 near a road in Spanaway, southeast of Tacoma. Investigators determined she had been strangled.
Prosecutors said Van Gilder was the first victim in a series of sexual assaults that took place between March and October 2002. Urbano-Vazquez was also convicted of rape charges involving three other women in the Tacoma area that year.
Urbano-Vazquez was deported to Mexico sometime after Van Gilder’s killing, the FBI’s Seattle office said. Doty believes there may have been more victims, including in Mexico. “He’s such a violent, violent person,” she said.
The Pierce County Prosecutor’s Office said DNA testing in 2012 connected Van Gilder’s rape and murder to three other rapes in the area. Urbano-Vazquez was captured abroad in 2023 and extradited to the United States in 2025, allowing investigators to obtain a DNA sample and compare it with evidence collected in 2002.
He is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 11. In Washington, aggravated murder carries a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Doty praised the three survivors who testified, saying their accounts were heartbreaking and that it took courage to speak in court about events from 24 years earlier. She and her cousin hugged the women as they left the courtroom and told them they were not to blame, Doty said. Their testimony, she added, was crucial to the case.
For Doty, the verdict is a win for her family and a source of hope for others still waiting for answers. “If there’s anybody out there with a cold case, don’t give up,” she said.
