Merel was granted early parole in 2016, after reportedly showing extensive remorse to Araujo's mother, who supported the decision.

[8] Araujo first met Michael Magidson, José Merel, Jaron Nabors, and Jason Cazares in late August or early September 2002.

[17] In the early morning hours of October 4, Magidson asked Araujo to reveal her sex or allow him to touch her genitals, which she refused.

[12] José Merel vomited upon learning Araujo had male genitalia, then began to cry in disbelief,[23] saying "I can't be f— gay.

[22][25][27] Emmanuel Merel later testified he walked to a convenience store to buy gum, then went to a friend's house to spend the night.

[15][29] Brown recalled that after she had left with Paul Merel, they drove around the block and returned to the house to see Nabors and Cazares leaving in Magidson's truck.

[23] After Araujo was knocked unconscious, Magidson bound her wrists and ankles, then she was wrapped in a comforter to minimize the amount of blood staining the carpet, before being carried to the garage of the home.

[11] José Merel testified he was cleaning Araujo's blood out of the carpets and couch as Magidson was binding her ankles, prior to her being taken to the garage.

[7] Rumors reached her family that a girl who had been outed as transgender at a party had been killed and buried in Tahoe,[7] and her aunt called the police on October 9 to pass on the story.

[8] The Alameda County Sheriff's Office dispatched four crime scene investigators and two detectives to recover Araujo's body from the grave site.

[36] After he was arrested, Nabors wrote a letter to a girlfriend in which he stated the defendants had discussed a "Soprano-type plan" to "kill the b— and get rid of her body".

[39][40][41] At the first trial, defense attorney Tony Serra accused Nabors of writing the letter knowing it would be intercepted and implicate Cazares.

[14] Nabors pleaded guilty on February 24, 2003, to a lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter, which carried an 11-year prison sentence, along with a promise to testify against the other three defendants.

[19][42][43] During the formal entry of his plea, Judge Kenneth Burr warned Nabors that he could still be charged with murder if prosecutors found he was not "living up to your end of the bargain".

Nabors testified that he stated he "couldn't believe that someone would ever do that, would be that deceitful" and that José Merel added "he was so mad he could still kick her a couple more times".

[45] In his opening statement, the defense attorney for Magidson argued that he should not be charged with murder, rather manslaughter at worst, under California law.

[46] Magidson's attorney said that his client was not biased[47] but had been shocked "beyond reason" to learn he had unwittingly had sex with a "man": a variant of the gay panic defense.

[34] One of the jurors wrote a newspaper article after the mistrial; in it, he credited Cazares's defense attorney, Tony Serra, with introducing enough reasonable doubt about the veracity of the prosecution's witnesses, including both Brown (who had admitted to consuming more than a dozen beers that night) and Nabors (who was characterized as a liar and "chameleon", prone to exaggeration and eager to please in every social situation).

The day after the first trial ended in a mistrial, a court granted Araujo's mother's petition for a posthumous name change, requiring the defense lawyers to refer to the victim with female pronouns.

[52] [Gwen] lived every day of her life yearning and longing to be a girl in every sense of the word, so if anyone who didn't know her made her feel that way, why would she reveal that she is transgender?

During Magidson's testimony, a tape of his initial interview with the police was shown, in which an investigator was recorded coaching him to use the trans panic defense: "You'd be surprised.

"[54] During the closing statements of the second trial, Cazares' defense lawyer Tony Serra argued that the three defendants were "ordinary human beings" who were guilty, at most, of manslaughter for their role in the death in a "classic state of heat and passion".

[53] To avoid a third trial, Cazares pleaded no contest to manslaughter on December 16, 2005,[60] and was sentenced to six years in prison,[61] with credit for time already served.

[63] Cazares asked to begin serving his sentence after the birth of his third child, scheduled for March or April 2006, which was granted,[53] although Lamiero noted "it's difficult for me to entertain a request like that when Gwen Araujo is dead".

[60] According to Lamiero, Cazares was willing to plead guilty to being an accessory after the fact, but that deal was rejected because the sentence was just three years and admitted no culpability in the murder.

The fund's purpose was to support school-based programs in the nine-county Bay Area that promote understanding of transgender people and issues through annual grants.

[70] Sylvia Guerrero, Araujo's mother, worked as a legal assistant at a San Jose law firm, but, as of 2016[update], was homeless due to PTSD from the incident.

[72] In September 2006, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the "Gwen Araujo Justice for Victims Act" (AB 1160) into law.

[76][77][78] The law put California on record as declaring it contrary to public policy for defendants to be acquitted or convicted of a lesser included offense on the basis of appeals to "societal bias".

[79][80] The law further restricted the use of the gay/trans panic defense by amending California's manslaughter statute to prohibit defendants from claiming that they were provoked to murder by discovering a victim's sexual orientation or gender identity.