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| Michelle Le |
Prosecutors introduced some disturbing testimony today, claiming that Giselle Esteban, the woman accused of murdering Michelle Le last year, had conducted a comprehensive search on Le as well as tactics to harm someone just before the nursing student went missing.
According to KTVU, FBI computer forensic examiner Jann Hayes claimed that she reviewed Esteban's computer after Le went missing in May 2011, and she discovered some 300 Internet searches for Le's name. In addition, there were extensive searches for ways of inducing a heart attack without leaving a trace, how to
follow someone without being caught, and how to break locks, deadbolts, and doors. There were also allegedly Internet hits on potassium chloride and highly toxic gases, according to the testimony.
Esteban, 28, is suspected of killing 26-year-old Le in a rage over an ex-boyfriend the two former high school friends had shared. Le, a nursing student, was attending her mentoring program at Kaiser Hospital in Hayward when she stepped outside to take a break. She never came back to class, and surveillance showed her white Honda leaving the parking garage that night.
Police later found her car a half-mile from the hospital; they also found surveillance showing Esteban, who reportedly held a grudge
against Le for stealing her high school boyfriend, had been inside the
parking garage when Le entered it.
They believe Esteban
assaulted Le before driving off in her car -- however, they do not know
what condition Le was in when Esteban and Le left the parking lo, police have said. A volunteer found
Le's badly decomposed body near Sunol about three months later -- the same day Esteban, who was pregnant at the time, appeared in court to answer to the murder charges.