Educated, accomplished. I am a professor, i tried to seek a Meaningful Life. Reporter she had a prestigious career, a loving husband, a young daughter. But she also had a secret. I have lived at this nightmare for 18 years. It is 7 murder. They followed him, they kidnapped him and then they dumped his body. It was clearly a plan. Plan. I didnt realize she was involved as deep as she was. Narrator scholar, professor, mother. What is going to happen to my daughter . I am innocent. She certainly knew. Manipulative, in your eyes . Uh, yes. Narrator everything was at stake. She certainly knew. Manipulative in your eyes . Yes. Everything was at stake. I could face life in prison, i am willing to do anything that needs to be done, now i have the strength. Attended Elite Schools, and rose to the top of her field. She was the embodiment of the American Dream, an immigrant who escaped a childhood of poverty and abuse, attended Elite Schools and rose to the top of her field. Against all odds, Norma Patricia became a wellrespected Psychology Professor and a champion for Childrens Health care around the world. A success story, a life 40 years in the making. So how on earth did it come to this . Whatever the charges are they are asking me to be guilty for, it is essentially something i cannot accept because it would eventually be a lie. Reporter the professors case would draw international attention. A young mother in a professor who is now in custody. 239yearold woman says she is the victim. Reporter it started a heated debate. This is not america. This is not justice. This is abuse of power. Reporter did this well educated mother orchestrate a horrific murder and sabotage the investigation . You do not get a pass to become a vigilante and kidnap people and kill them. Reporter or was she the victim at the center of it all . Do you ask yourself, how did i get here . Absolutely. Absolutely. I rewind so many events in my life. I rewind so many things in my mind. Reporter try to make sense of this mystery, you do have to rewind come all the way back to 1974, the year patricia was born in a Small Farming Town in southern mexico. It was a very rural, rustic place. It is a town with unpaved streets, no sewage, no running water. Reporter the family moved to Southern California for a better life. But, patricias life here wasnt easy. She says her dad physically abused her mother. My father had lots of difficulties, he was an alcoholic and he was quite violent with her. Reporter patricia says she too was victimized by her dad, claiming he had sexually abused her beginning when she was just 5 years old. As a 5yearold, i couldnt go to anybody for help. Who could i go to . I could not go to him. He was the one abusing me. I could not go to my mother when she couldnt stop him from beating her. So i really had nowhere to turn. Reporter apparently, patricia did not tell anyone at the time. Her mother and sister worried about the abuse later. Patricias brother said their father eventually admitted to him that the abuse had happened. The brother also said his father would not respond to our questions about it. The way that i dealt with all that chaos was to throw myself into my books, into education. The bad things that were happening in your life or driving you to essentially be a better person . Absolutely. To better yourself . Yeah. Reporter all her studying paid off, she excelled, earning a scholarship to attend high school at Phillips Exeter academy, a prestigious boarding school in new hampshire. It must have been a Culture Shock to go from the life that you had to this very privileged surrounding . Absolutely. Did you feel like you are living the American Dream . Absolutely. I have always been so grateful to the u. S. Reporter she probably could have had her pick of any ivy league school, but chose to attend pomona, a topnotch college near her familys california home. But on one weekend in her sophomore year, her dreams of a happy college life were dashed. It was march, 1995, when she made a decision that would haunt her for the rest of her life. I was a very serious student, i wasnt a drinker, i wasnt a party or. Reporter although she did not go out often, one saturday night, patricia decided to go to the nightclub. There, someone caught her eye. I met this person and we exchanged numbers. What was it about him that attracted you . There was really nothing attractive or unattractive, it was just somebody who seemed to be nice. I did not think that i would be seeing this person again. Reporter but he called the very next morning and invited patricia to breakfast along with her sister and friend. After they ate, they offered patricia a ride back to campus. He says before i go, would you mind if i get a glass of water . So we go to my dorm. My dorm room. Reporter it was then, she says, the casual date turned terrifying. When we were inside he tells me that that he wants to have and i tell him no, i am not interested. He starts to get aggressive and starts to try to kiss me and i push him away. We are struggling. And then ultimately he takes off my pants and he forces himself on me. When he is finished, i i just turn away from him and i am half naked and curled up into a ball, i just started sobbing. When he gets to the door, he tells me, you have a lot of problems, and he walks away. Reporter patricia says she was raped and like many victims, she felt somehow it was her fault. I felt so dirty and so ashamed. I was just blaming myself, i thought, my goodness, why did you do this, why did you bring him here, why did you trust him . Reporter patricia did not call the police the next day she went to her College Health center where she says she saw a nurse but says the nurse did not take any action to report her rape allegation. I had told her i had been raped and i remember her reaction because it made me feel just as ashamed. She doesnt want to deal with it. She walked away. Reporter patricia herself had walked away from terrible experience as before but moving on from this. Nearly impossible. Especially when just weeks later, police found a body. Coming up, that discovery would lead to a strange and sinister puzzle. I have been to a lot of things in my career but this one was a little more gruesome. Reporter a mystery victim, a crime of passion, and on the phone bill, a clue. There is a handwritten note that said patty. Reporter when dateline continues. Or. Manage your diabetes with more confidence and lower your a1c. Try it for free at freestylelibre. Us. How long have you been tracking the value of our car . 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Three weeks after patricia had her fateful encounter at el cortez nightclub, two men went to the same club three weeks after patricia had her fateful encounter at el cortez nightclub, two men went to the same club and had a life changing encounter of their own. I believe they were just heading home and approximately a mile and a half from the club , they were rear ended by a white man. Reporter dean was a detective back then with the Santa Ana Police. Was this just a minor Traffic Accident . Reporter it was just a Fender Bender. Reporter premierss pickup truck had been rear ended by a white man. His friend and the Passenger Seat said not to stop. He said we have to pull over and exchange information. Reporter as a friend later told police, when he got out of his truck, several men got out of the van. The men attacked him. The friend ran to get help. He just turned and ran northbound on the street at that time. Reporter his friend came back to the incident scene with police but the white van was gone. The police arrived, is gonzalo there . He is nowhere to be found. He has just finished . Correct. Reporter any signs of a struggle . There were. I believe they the issue that we believe belongs to mr. Ramirez, a watch, and then there was also a small amount of blood. Reporter gonzalo was now missing, possibly kidnapped. Police had no idea where he might be or who would have kidnapped him. Now frantic, the friend called gonzalos family at 3 00 that morning after hearing the news, his brother was missing, Carlos Ramirez started making phone calls. I called all of his friends, have you seen my brother . No . Reporter carlos drove around that night searching but never found gonzalo. At 8 30 the next morning, easter sunday, 1995, investigator Larry Montgomery got a call at home. He immediately knew something bad had happened. It was my sergeant and he told me there was a body found and i was to respond. Reporter montgomery at the time was an experienced detective with the irvine California Police department. He was used to dealing with murders but this one stood out. I have been to a lot of things in my career but this one was a little more gruesome, just because of the sheer amount of injury to the body work he was definitely hacked to death. Reporter the mans body had been found near a stretch of the 405 freeway. He had clearly suffered a brutal death his body was sliced dozens of times with some kind of heavy bladed knife. Like a meat cleaver or machete. His right hand was nearly severed. And oddly, there was some kind of blue towel like material wound around the body. A blue towel was wrapped all around him from the torso and legs all the way up to the neck area, it was wrapped around five times around the neck and then several times around the eyes. Reporter one thing was clear to police. This murder was personal. After looking at the victims injuries i would say it was really consistent with somebody who had some sort of heated passion because the injuries were just consistent with somebody very angry. Reporter detectives had so many questions. Who was this man and why had this happened to him . One of the problems we had is we have no identification on the victim. Reporter another day passed, it was now monday. Gonzalos family heard that a body had been found in the area, praying it wasnt their brother, they called police. When this man called, he identified himself , he had a brother that was missing from santa and area and was possibly kidnapped and so he thought it was very possibly his brother that was the victim. Reporter police were able to connect the dots rather quickly, the body they had found was that of Gonzalo Ramirez. When his family went to identify his remains, they could not believe how he looked. His brother, benito. When we picked up my brother, we could not recognize his face. It is very sad. You know . I dont want anybody to see or one family we saw it. Reporter van left behind two little daughters. Sheet he was a very good person, responsible person. Police were also trying to find out why theyre only witness was his friend, the last person to see him live. He was pretty detailed and unable to give the responding officers at that time a lot of good physical descriptions of both the vehicle and the suspects. But the friend said he had no idea who the men in the white van were or why a Fender Bender turned into a kidnapping and murder. Where do you go from there when you dont even know who these men are . Generally you would start with the individual who has been kidnapped, looking into their background, seeing what is going on in their life. Whether they have financial issues, maybe a love relationship that has ended. Reporter detectives interviewed gonzalos friends, Work Associates and Family Members but got nothing. I dont think they were able to provide anything that really could point to detectives at that time in the right direction. Reporter eventually, investigators stumbled across something in gonzalos home, something very scary as scribbled on his phone bill. There is a handwritten note that said patty and there were two numbers. Was this patty someone they needed to talk to right away . It was. Reporter coming up. I was weeping and crying, it was really hard. Reporter patty is about to open up to the police. That is kind of a twist, it through a whole new level element into the investigation. When dateline continues. E christina with Verizon Business unlimited, i get 5g, truly unlimited data, and unlimited hotspot data. So, no matter what, im running this kitchen. vo make the switch. Its your business. Its your verizon. Her uncles unhappy. Im sensing an underlying issue. Its tmobile. 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Mike murri was an Orange County deputy District Attorney, he did not work this investigation back in 1995 but later joined the case. They called this patty . Faded. And where did it lead them . They contacted her and she agreed to come down to the Police Department and discuss Gonzalo Ramirez. Reporter the mysterious patty, it turned out, was then college didnt the tressa esparza. We work for the Santa Ana Police department. She told the police that Gonzalo Ramirez was a young man she had met at a club in santa ana, several weeks prior. That they had danced together, she liked him, he seemed to like her. They exchanged phone numbers. Reporter that is how her name and numbers came to be scribbled on gonzalos phone bill that patricia did not seem too concerned about why she was being questioned about gonzalo. At what point does she say, what is this about . Why are you asking me about this man . She never does. She never asked . I dont ever recall her asking that question to the police during that interview. Reporter in the interview, patricia reluctantly told her story about what happened in the dorm room with gonzalo. Well in your dorm, he took sexual advances of you to the point of even possibly being raped by him. Was this correct . Yes. He turned around and kissed me and i just stopped him right away. I got up at that instant, when he kissed me and i was walking toward another chair. And then he got up also and and that is when it happened. She told the police that he had sexually assaulted her. That is kind of a twist. That through a whole new element into the investigation. What did they make of it . Initially, they just wanted to hear what she had to say. Reporter she said the rape happened about 2 1 2 months earlier, this is the first time she was reporting it to the police. All the while, she says her world was falling apart. I was weeping and crying, it was really hard. Really hard to put myself together. I wasnt doing my assignments as i should have. My grades were dropping, and so i wasnt able to deal with the rape as well as i had wished i had. Reporter she also told police that after the alleged rape, she confided in an ex boyfriend. They dated for about seven months but were no longer together. Still, one day when he stopped by her dorm room, she broke down and told him what happened. That mustve been hard to finally open up. Yeah. I did not feel that i wanted to but i guess i did want somebody to be there and understand. I wanted somebody to just listen to me and just make me feel that it wasnt that i wasnt so dirty and so ashamed. Did he help you . Did he make you feel better . At first. But then he became angry and i did not understand why. Yes, of course he would be angry if somebody did it to your sister, to your friend, but we werent together anymore