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A San Mateo County jury Friday found Menlo Park jewelry store owner Ricardo Zambrano guilty of masterminding a plot to have a former employee raped for resisting his romantic advances, but jury members could not come to a verdict on charges he planned to have her killed.
The hung jury on the conspiracy to commit murder charge was 11-1 in favor of Zambrano’s guilt, a clerk in Judge Thomas Smith’s office reported.
In total, the jury in Redwood City found Zambrano guilty of five charges, including conspiracy to commit forcible rape, kidnapping with the intent to commit forcible rape, kidnapping in commission of a carjacking, dissuading a witness and false imprisonment.
Zambrano returned to San Mateo County jail following the verdict and is scheduled to return to court on April 23 to set a sentencing date and to see whether the district attorney has refiled the conspiracy to commit murder charge, the clerk said.
Zambrano, 37, of Fresno, was on trial for the June 10, 2005 kidnapping by gunpoint of a woman who had worked for him at his jewelry store inside the Mi Rancho market in Menlo Park.
The kidnapping was carried out by another man, Alfonzo Cuevas Gonzalez, 40, also of Fresno, who now faces a minimum of 35 years to life in prison after a jury convicted him on March 15.
The victim — a woman in her 20s from Mexico whose name was withheld in the trial to protect her identity — was carjacked and driven to Fresno, but the plot dissolved when Gonzalez couldn’t find his accomplices. The victim eventually escaped with the help of a Fresno woman who had foreknowledge of the plan.
Police were notified and Gonzalez was arrested in Fresno a day later. Zambrano was arrested in Fresno on July 22, 2005, the district attorney’s office reported.
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