Destiny Lauren (1979 – 2009) sex work, IRA bombings, miscarriages of justice and US royalty.

++ updated August 2013.

On 5th November 2009, Destiny Lauren aged 29, was found strangled in her flat in Kentish Town in northern London.   She was rushed to hospital but died shortly afterwards.

She was pre-op and worked as a prostitute.  Whether we classify her as a transsexual or as a prostitute, deaths like this are far too common.

Destiny had an interesting although rather sad family nexus, that most newspapers, with the exception of the Hampstead and Highgate Express, her local newspaper, did not pay any attention to.


Elizabeth and Paul Hill, brother and sister, were raised in Belfast, but moved to London.

On 5 October 1974 The Provisional Irish Republican Army detonated two bombs at two pubs, The Horse and Groom and The Seven Stars, both in Guildford, Surrey, and both popular with British Army soldiers.  Four soldiers and one civilian were killed; a further sixty-five were wounded.  Under pressure to come up with results, the police arrested Paul Hill and three others (Gerry Conlon, Patrick Armstrong, Carole Richardson).  They were convicted and imprisoned.   Elizabeth Hill was also questioned and held at the police station for a week.

Elizabeth married a Mr Samuels, and they had four sons, including Justin who felt that he should have been a girl, and grew up to be Destiny.  Elizabeth endured the strain of campaigning for 15 years for her brother’s release.

In 1990, The Guildford Four were released.   Their convictions were overturned on appeal in that they were based on confessions extracted by torture, and evidence of innocence had been held back by the police.  In addition, at the trial of the Balcombe Street Four, the IRA men instructed their lawyers to draw attention to the fact that innocent people were serving time for the Guildford bombings.

The movie, In the Name of the Father, 1993, based on the autobiography by Gerry Conlon, is the story of the Guildford Four.

After release, in 1993,  Paul Hill married Mary Courtney Kennedy, the fifth child of Robert and Ethel Kennedy of Massachusetts.  They legally separated in 2006.

Elizabeth committed suicide in November 2005, at the flat that she shared with her daughter, Destiny.  Destiny, was well-known in London’s transsexual scene, and was an acquaintance of Boy George.  She continued to live in her mother’s flat, until she was found strangled.

Leon Fyle, 23, was convicted for the murder and jailed for 21 years in September 2010, but the Court of Appeal quashed the conviction the next April,  and he was again found guilty at the retrial.  He had stolen £350 found on her and spent £250 of it on two sex workers at a brothel in Kings Cross the same night.  Det Insp Liz Baker pointed out that Fyle never showed any remorse.

• “Tragic story of murdered transsexual, whose uncle was one of the Guildford Four”. Hampstead and Highgate Express. 26 November 2009. www.hamhigh.co.uk/content/camden/hamhigh/news/story.aspx?brand=NorthLondon24&category=Newshamhigh&tBrand=northlondon24&tCategory=newshamhigh&itemid=WeED26%20Nov%202009%2016%3A32%3A18%3A477. 
• "Man Jailed for "Brutal and Pre-Meditated" Murder".  LBC, 3/6/11.  www.lbc.co.uk/man-jailed-for-brutal-and-pre-meditated-murder-30611.
• "Man guilty of Destiny Lauren murder in Kentish Town".  BBC News, 21 Sepember 2011.  www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-15010132.