A cold case that began on a Pierce County road in March 2002 ended in a Tacoma courtroom on Tuesday, November 3, when a Pierce County jury found Miguel Urbano-Vazquez guilty of aggravated first-degree murder in the death of Sharon Van Gilder, 39, a mother of two, and guilty of rape charges for attacks on three other women in Tacoma that same year. The verdict, reported by The News Tribune and KOMO News, closes a prosecution that depended on DNA evidence recovered in 2002, matched to Urbano-Vazquez a decade later, and a manhunt that ended with FBI agents arresting him in Mexico in 2023. He is scheduled to be sentenced on December 11 and faces life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Source: The News Tribune reporting via WFB News (Nov. 4, 2026)
The verdict, charge by charge
Jurors convicted Urbano-Vazquez of aggravated first-degree murder in Van Gilder's rape and strangling death, according to The News Tribune's reporting. They 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 2002. Prosecutors told jurors that Van Gilder was the first victim in a series of violent sexual assaults carried out between March and October 2002 — a series the jury's verdict now legally establishes, more than 24 years after the crimes.
March 2002: the last night of Sharon Van Gilder
Van Gilder, a mother of two, was last seen in March 2002 leaving the Golden Rooster Tavern in Tacoma with Urbano-Vazquez and another man, according to prosecutors as reported by The News Tribune. Several hours later, investigators found her on a county road; she had been badly beaten and strangled. Prosecutors said DNA from Urbano-Vazquez was recovered from her body — the physical evidence that, a decade later, would give investigators the name they did not have in 2002. No arrest was made at the time, and the case joined Pierce County's cold-case files.
The three surviving victims — and their testimony
Prosecutors said the attacks continued through 2002. In June, they said, Urbano-Vazquez picked up a 34-year-old unhoused woman who was hitchhiking toward Seattle and attacked her at a garage. Two months later, prosecutors said, he and two other men assaulted a 29-year-old woman at the same garage. In October, they said, he and a younger man picked up a 40-year-old woman at a bar and attacked her in an alley. All three women survived. More than 20 years later, the surviving victims testified at trial, describing their attacks to the jury, KOMO News reported. Prosecutors told KOMO 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 the man convicted can never hurt anybody again.
How DNA, a deportation and the FBI crossed two countries
It took investigators roughly a decade to connect Urbano-Vazquez to the crimes. DNA testing matched him to evidence from the crime scenes in 2012, and Pierce County issued an arrest warrant that October, The News Tribune reported. By then, however, investigators discovered he had already been deported to Mexico, according to the FBI; officials have not disclosed when he was deported or why. His location remained unknown until investigators tracked him down in 2019. In March 2023, FBI agents arrested him in Chimalhuacán, about 22 miles east of Mexico City, and he was extradited to Pierce County last year to stand trial — a return that put a 2002 case in front of a 2026 jury, with witnesses describing events from nearly a quarter-century earlier.
Why this verdict matters beyond one courtroom
For Tacoma and Pierce County, the case is a test of what cold-case DNA work can still deliver when a suspect has left the country: evidence collected in 2002 held its value through a 2012 match, an international search and a trial in which the surviving victims, now in their 50s and 60s, were willing to testify. It is also an incomplete ending in one respect prosecutors themselves stated on the record to KOMO News: the other men implicated in some of the 2002 attacks have never been identified or arrested, so parts of what happened that year remain formally unresolved even after Tuesday's verdict. For the Punjabi diaspora and other immigrant communities around Tacoma, Seattle and the I-5 corridor, the case has a second resonance — it turned on cross-border enforcement cooperation between US and Mexican authorities, the same machinery readers follow in immigration cases, here used to return a murder suspect to face a jury.
What happens next
Urbano-Vazquez is scheduled to be sentenced on December 11 in Pierce County. Aggravated first-degree murder in Washington carries life in prison without the possibility of parole, and both The News Tribune's reporting and the verdict coverage state that is the sentence he faces; the rape convictions will be addressed at the same sentencing. Any appeal would follow sentencing under Washington's normal appellate process. Awaaz Punjab will report the sentence when it is imposed on December 11.
Source: Pulptastic summary of News Tribune / KOMO reporting (Nov. 4, 2026)