Shelley Ball (1953–) sex worker, inmate.

Original: May 2011. 

William Ross Ball was raised, one of four children in Chilliwack, British Columbia. Their alcoholic father killed himself when the child was eight, followed by the mother having a nervous breakdown two years later.  The children were then raised in group and foster homes.  Shelley later said: "I wanted to be a woman since I was a kid, as far back as I can remember".  At 13 she was committed to a mental institution near Vancouver for dressing in female clothes.  Ball's teenage years were spent in reformatories and institutions across Canada, and even for a while at a boys' school in Washington State - he was kicked out for attempted arson.  Whenever Ball ran away, she survived as a female sex worker, selling her body to heterosexual men who very well knew what she was.  This fed a heroin addiction. She admitted robbing some of her customers, and had been stabbed several times. One night she was beaten, robbed and left for dead on a railway track in Vancouver. 

In 1977, Shelley, now 24, was working at a house for ex-mental patients in Edmonton.  In February, she met a trick in Edmonton's skid row section, and went to his hotel room with him.  Either: when he admitted that he had no money, she claimed to be a member of the police moraliy squad, he got nasty, she slapped him, and it escalated.  Or: the client became enraged when he realized that she was trans.  She ended up stabbing him 17 times.  

There was some confusion at the trial in February 1978 about which pronouns to use.  Edmonton psychiatrist Donald Milliken testified that Ball was transsexual, and already on female hormone therapy.   He said that she would be more confortable in a women's penitentiary.  Shelley, in male clothing, at first refused to testify in that there was a group of 14-15 year-old school children present in the court in pursuit of a language project.  The court accepted her contention that the case was not suitable for such young children and they were withdrawn,

Mr Justice Tevy Miller "with a great deal of trouble and soul-searching" found Shelley guilty of second-degree murder, and imposed the mandatory life sentence - which ruled out parole for the first ten years. Unusually, the judge also recommended a sex-change operation.  The chief of medical services for the federal corrections service approved the operation in that Ball would be molested in a male prison, and that the operation would likely decrease his violent tendencies.

This was the first such surgery for a convict in Canada, and is in marked contrast to how all other trans prisoners were treated until Synthia Kavanagh won her appeal in 2000.

Ball, who already had breasts, but was 1.88 m (6'2'') and 73 kg (162 lb.) did time in three different male institutions, and had no trouble. "In Prince Albert (Saskatchewan), I think I went out with nine different guys while I was there. I had more husbands than Zsa Zsa Gabor."

Shelley in 1984

Shelley had partial (no vaginoplasty) genital reassignment surgery in 1980 and was then transferred to Kingston Penitentiary for Women.  It was reported that the operation cost $250,000 - which led to cries of outrage.  Vancouver trans activist Stephanie Castle wrote to The Province newspaper pointing out that "The $250,000 is enough for 30 such surgeries. ... Doing SRS in Canada currently costs about $8,000."  She was given the reply that "Ancillary security costs to guard Ms Ball during repeated hospital visits pushed up the costs". 

 She was initially treated badly by the other women inmates, and attempted suicide several times. However she had an affair with an inmate and decided, after a lifetime of having sex with men, that she was a lesbian.  She took a  a hairdressing course while in Kingston, and later a Queens University psychology course.

There were two attempts at parole.  On one she made an unauthorized trip to Vancouver to see her mother, but the mother was too drunk to recognize her, which prompted Shelley to go back on heroin. Both the trip and the heroin led to the parole board revoking her privileges, and her hoped-for release in 1990 did not happen. 

She accepted that her life is in prison, and became chairperson of the prisoners' committee, pushing for more services for the other prisoners. 

She was in the news again in 1998, still in Kingston Penitentiary, when she attempted to slash her own throat.

Toronto Star 1979.8.12 p2

*Not the Canadian football player, not the insect ecologist.

• "Trans-sexual trial sparks confusion".  Red Deer Advocate, February 15, 1978: 2. 
• Dick Schuler. "Prostitute gets life for stabbing death". Edmonton Journal, February 15, 1978. 
• Isabel Miller.  "Not in Front of the Children".  Letter, Edmonton Journal, February 21, 1978: 5. 
• Peter O'Neil. "Sex-change operation proves less than blessing". The Vancouver Sun, Aug 5, 1989: B3.
• Beth Gorham.  "Transsexual is content in prison". Calgary Herald, February 5,, 1989: 29.
• Holly Horwood. "A female 'eunuch's' cry for help". The Province, Jan 29, 1995: A2.
• Stephanie Castle. "Hurts transsexuals". Letter in The Province, Fenbruary 6, 1995: 17. 
• "Inmate slashes throat". Kingston Whig Standard, Sep 29, 1998: 3.

-----------------

Kingston Penitentiary for Women was closed in 2000. From 1995 to 2000 its inmates were transferred to other federal correctional institutions.

I was unable to find any mention of what happened to Shelley Ball after this date.

Amber McLaughlin (1973-2023) convicted of murder

McLaughlin was born in Missouri and given the name Scott. The mother abandoned the child who was placed in the foster care system: one foster parent rubbed feces in his face, and an adoptive father tasered the child. Severe depression resulted in multiple suicide attempts, both as a child and as an adult.

McLaughlin became a registered sex offender in 1992 after a conviction for sexual assault against a 14-year-old girl. In 2003 McLaughlin was arrested for the rape and fatal stabbing of an ex-girlfriend in Earth City, an ex-urb of St Louis, whom he had been stalking. In 2006, the jury found McLaughlin guilty of first-degree murder, but was deadlocked at the punishment phase of the trial. The trial judge intervened and imposed a death sentence. Missouri and Indiana are the only two US states that allow judges make such a decision. 

In 2016, a federal judge ordered a new sentencing hearing after finding that the defense had not used an expert witness on penalty mitigation to discuss the accussed’s mental state after finding that he had falsified data 17 years earlier. In 2021 a three-judge panel of the 8^th US Court of Appeals ruled that earlier falsified date was irrelevant, and that the expert should have testified. However, they also found that the testimony was unlikely to change the outcome, and reinstated the death penalty.

On death row at the state prison in Potosi, McLaughlin announced in 2019 that she was trans, and was allowed to transition. She took the name Amber, but her legal name was never changed, nor was she allowed to start on estrogen.

3 January 2023, Amber Mclaughlin was executed by lethal injection.

• Robert Patrick. “Federal appeals court reinstates death penalty in 2003 St. Louis County rape, murder”. St Louis Post-Dispatch, Aug 18, 2021. Online.
• Kevin Held. “Missouri executes convicted murderer Amber McLaughlin”. Fox2now, Jan 3, 2023. Online.
• Riya Teotia. “Who was Amber McLaughlin, the first transgender woman executed in the US? Know about the 2003 case”. Wionews, Jan 04, 2023. Online.
• Emily Chudy. “Trans prisoner Amber McLaughlin set to be executed today unless governor grants clemency”. PinkNews, Jan 03 2023. Online.

EN.Wikipedia

------------------------

Some sites claim that Amber was the first openly transgender woman executed in the U.S. This of course ignores the many two-spirit shamans executed by white colonialists. It also ignores Frank Spisak executed 17 February 2011.

From arrest to execution was almost twenty years. So in effect McLaughlin served a life sentence in addition to being executed.

In Britain, prior to the abolition of the death penalty, it was judges, not juries, who decided between a life sentence and a death sentence.

The murderers amongst us

I recently noticed an upsurge in my top-ten articles of those convicted of murder, and was wondering why.

Then I discovered this terfy page. Several of the comments added by JLeGuin (the original poster) link to articles in my encyclopedia.

https://ovarit.com/o/GenderCritical/46166/can-we-build-an-index-of-tims-who-murdered-women

TIM is one of those terfy terms, an acronym for ‘Trans Identified Male’ meaning a trans woman.

GVWW is not an apologia for trans persons. I attempt to report truthfully whatever I find. It is the case that there are some trans murderers. As there are multiple millions of trans persons that is not surprising. Pick any other group - academics, shopkeepers, immigrants, housewives, musicians, actors, computer programmers, lesbians etc, and you can compile a list of those charged with and even convicted of murder or manslaughter.

Some of the ones that JLEGuin failed to mention: Dante Gill, David Petillo, Pipás Pista, Amelia Gourley, Harry Crawford, Amara Vadillo, Frank Spisak, Bill Allen, Caitlyn Jenner.

It would also help if JLeGuin bothered to get his/her facts right. In particular it is not true that Synthia China-Blast was convicted of rape. By all accounts she is a Kinsey 6 and has never even had sex with a female.

For comparison here are some lists of musicians and other celebrities who have been charged with or convicted of murder:

IMDB(Celebrities who have killed someone)

Listverse(10 Rock and Metal Musicians who killed Someone)

The Top Tens(Top 10 Musicians who killed Someone)

Listverse(10 Murderous College Professors)

Graveyard Shift(10 Teachers who turned into Infamous Criminals)

Unknown Gender History(Lesbian Serial Killers)

Michelle-Lael Norsworthy (1964 - ) convicted of murder

​After high school, as Jeffrey, Norsworthy became a police informer, joined the army national guard, ran around town inebriated, and carried a loaded gun.

“I was an extremely aggressive, non-thinking person. I did anything I could to suppress my femininity”. 

One night in 1984 Norsworthy, then 20, encountered a man in a bar in Fullerton (close to Los Angeles) whom he had helped bust in a drug deal years before.  They argued, first in the bar, then in the parking lot, and Norsworthy got a gun from his car.  It went off three times, nicking the man’s femoral and carotid arteries.  Norsworthy began dressing his wounds as help was summoned. The man died six weeks later.

Norsworthy was sentenced in 1987 to 17 years to life in prison for second degree murder. Norsworthy takes full responsibility for the murder –

“the crime I committed I’m responsible for. I’m not trying to mitigate that in any way”. 

Most of Norsworthy’s 28 years incarceration was spent in Mule Creek state prison in Ione, California. Most of the first years were violent: fights, self-mutilation, etc. It was not until 1994 that Norsworthy was able to put a name to various feelings. A prison psychiatrist, or maybe the priest, used the term ‘transsexual’. Norsworthy looked it up in a dictionary and it clicked.

She came out and started expressing as female – she now declared her name to be Michelle-Lael. However it took many years of agitation before she was transferred to Vacaville, the only California prison with a Gender Clinic.  She was diagnosed with gender dysphoria in 1999, and it was another year after that before she was allowed female hormones. She requested a bra, was denied, appealed and was so allowed.

In 2009, again in Mule Creek, she was gang-raped with the prison guards doing nothing. This left her with broken teeth and Hepatitis C – for the latter she was not allowed any treatment.

Finally in 2012 her psychologist recommended gender-affirmation surgery – however he was quickly transferred to another prison. In 2013 Norsworthy was again denied parole as “a danger to society”.

In 2014 she filed a lawsuit, arguing that denying her surgery was cruel and unusual punishment. In addition one doctor added that, without surgery, her already damaged liver would suffer from the high dose of hormones – after surgery they could be reduced.   In April 2015 U.S. District Court Judge Jon Tigar agreed, ordering California to provide her transition surgery. This was a groundbreaking decision. Norsworthy was the first person incarcerated in California to get such a ruling.

Michelle-Lael in prison, 2015

All of a sudden she was returned quickly – two years early - to the parole board because of  "a change in circumstances or new information” and parole was granted – officially this was recognition of Norsworthy’s model behaviour: she hadn’t been written up for a disciplinary infraction for years. The same day the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation filed a motion to toss out Judge Tigar’s opinion, arguing that since she’d been paroled, the ruling was moot. The Transgender Law Center, who were representing her, went back to court, arguing the state was trying to make the precedent (not to mention the cost of surgery) go away by releasing her.

In August 2015 the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation agreed with Shiloh Quine, 56, also suing for transgender surgery, that it would pay, but only if all parties agreed that no precedent was being set.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals did rule that the timing of Norsworthy’s release implied “there was at least some chance that the defendants influenced the parole process.” Norsworthy’s case was allowed to set legal precedent for other inmates.

After release Michelle-Lael, aged 52 after 28 years in prison, initially lived in a halfway house in San Francisco for female drug addicts. Although she had been sober for more than 20 years, it was the only place that would take her. She was then able to receive treatment for Hepatitis C. She is sort of cured but has permanent damage to her liver.

She had affirmative surgery in 2017 provided by Medi-Cal. She has been attempting to setup a charity to help trans persons and other women in San Francisco.

The California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation announced a new policy in 2015 re trans prisoners, and a few were even granted surgery, but most were not.  A 30-page guidance document was released in March 2020 that aligns more closely to WPATH criteria, and permits primary care doctors to prescribe hormones.

• Ed Pilkington. “'Prison within prison': a transgender inmate's years-long battle for treatment”. The Guardian, 26 July 2015. Online.
• “Transgender convicted murderer, 51, seeking sex-reassignment surgery whilst in jail will now be RELEASED from prison after serving 28 years of her sentence”. The Daily Mail, 7 August 2015. Online.
• Bob Egalko. “Transgender pioneer out of prison, on a new path”. San Francisco Chronicle, March 19, 2016. Online.
• Annie Brown. “Michelle’s Case”. The California Sunday Magazine, May 17, 2016. Online.
• Jacob Anderson-Minshall. “This Trans Ex-Con Helped Make History” Advocate, March 07 2017. Online.
• Chris Johnson.  “Calif. prison system updates policy on trans inmates as scrutiny grows”.  Washington Blade, March 11, 2020. Online.

Pipás Pista (1886–1940) farm worker convicted of murder

Note1: In Hungarian/Magyar third person pronouns are not gendered. Ő is used whether the person is male or female, and will be used here for the protagonist, but, to avoid complication, only for the protagonist. The accusative, him-her, is őt; the possessive is övé.

Note 2: Hungarians put the family name first, as do Basques, Chinese etc.

Note 3: If a traditional Hungarian woman takes her husband’s name, ő adds né to it. So when Fődi Viktória married Rieger Pál ő became Rieger Pálné.

Fődi Viktória was born in Átokháza ( which actually means 'curse house') , 40 km east of Szeged in what is now southern Hungary.   Ővé father a jobbing shepherd. Ő continued animal herding until age 17 while other girls were put to working as servants from age 12 or so.

Ő was then married without övé consent to 46-year-old Reiger Pál, a wagon driver, and became known, as per the local tradition as Reiger Pálné. As no dowry was provided, ő was regarded as a sort of unpaid domestic servant. A few months later Pál made a wrong accusation as to who was stealing his tobacco, and then found out that it was his new wife. Ő had been smoking since childhood on doctor’s advice because of a lung disease. He also learned that when working as a shepherd, ő had become accustomed to drinking in taverns. Most years they had a pregnancy, six in all, but most became miscarriages, and only one child survived. Ő hated having sex with övé husband, and he beat őt regularly.

In 1910, ő left him. Ő flattened övé breasts with rags and straps, wore male clothing and gave övé name as Pipás Pista (Pista is a nickname derived from Istvan or Steven, and Pipás is a pipe smoker). Ő travelled around the Great Hungarian Plain doing male jobs such as plowing, sowing, harvesting and slaughtering pigs. Ő was primarily employed by widows or wives whose husband was not able or not doing the job for whatever reason. The advent of war in 1914 increased such employment.

With the end of war, the dual sovereignty of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary fell apart. Austria became a republic. In Hungary, after a year of being a republic, strongman and last Admiral of the Hungarian Navy, Miklós Horthy took over, re-established the Kingdom of Hungary and declared himself Regent. The apparent king, Károly IV, twice attempted to take the throne, but was rebuffed, exiled to Madeira and died shortly afterwards. Hungary continued as a kingdom without a king. By the Treaty of Trianon, 1920, Hungary lost over 70% of its territory as Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Poland came into being, and Romania was enlarged.

Szeged was now a border town close to both Romania and the new Yugoslavia. Pipás Pista went into a partnership with a wagon driver to smuggle goods from Subotica (Szabadka in Hungarian).

Some wives, having become used to independence, were not too happy with the return of their husbands from the front, especially if they were abusive. Divorce was not an option. In 1919 Pipás Pista performed övé first husband killing, that of Börcsök István, with the help of two male assistants, and in front of the wife and children. Pipás hiding behind the main door, put a rope around Börcsök’s neck, at which moment övé accomplices threw the other end of the rope over the beam, and started to pull it as quickly and as strongly as they could. They then carried the body to the stable—with the help of the victim’s oldest son—and hanged him so that it would resemble suicide. Pipás put a chair under the hanging corpse and knocked it down to look like it had been kicked away.

The widow did not feel secure alone and invited Pipás to live with her. However ő stole hens and was often drunk. The widow felt that Pipás was as bad as her husband. Ő did not co-habit with any other later clients, mainly being paid with agricultural products and some money.

It is not recorded how many husbands were removed by Pipás Pista. Word of övé services spread by word of mouth, but the authorities were not informed. The land was poor in the region, and small farmers were fairly often driven to genuine suicide.

In 1929 there was a big murder scandal in Tiszazug, 95 km north of Szeged.  Authorities were alerted by an anonymous letter that there was an epidemic of arsenic poisonings in the area.  The arsenic was mainly obtained by soaking it out of fly-papers, and many of the victims were unwanted husbands. Exhumations at the cemeteries found 162 corpses apparently murdered – the deaths dating back to 1911. People began to speak of the Angel Makers of Tiszazug (Tiszazugi méregkeverők). 34 women and one man were indicted. Afterwards, 26 of the Angel Makers were tried. Eight were sentenced to death but only two were executed. Another 12 received prison sentences. However the investigation had become inconvenient for the government, and further investigations were discontinued.

In June 1932 local police broke up a couple quarrel, and walked the woman home. The man’s former wife was the daughter of one of the husbands that Pipás Pista had eliminated. The woman talked too much, and soon afterwards Pipás Pista was arrested and with two of övé clients and övé assistants was put on trial. After the Tiszazug scandal, authorities wanted to minimize the charges against Pipás Pista.

The arrest of course outed Pipás Pista as having a female body, and ö was compelled to dress as a woman for the trial, something that caused őt obvious distress. Ő remained unwilling to admit to being a woman, even though it was reported that her gender was an open secret.

Pipás Pista was sentenced to death in January 1933, but the sentence was commuted by the Regent Miklós Horthy. Pipás Pista died in prison in 1940 suffering from emphysema and myocardial degeneration.

• Judit Ember (dir). Pipás Pista és társai. MTV-2, Sepember 1983, Hungary
• “The Cross-Dressing Husband-Killer For Hire: Viktoria Foedi Rieger – 1933”. Unknown Gender History, September 25, 2011. Online.
• “P is for Pipás Pista, Cross-Dressing Assassin for Hire” . MopDog, April 18, 2014. Online.
• Tamas Bezsenyi. “The First Female Serial Killer in the Kingdom of Hungary”. In: Nermin Ahmed Haikal and Morag Kennedy (eds) The Spectacle of Murder: Fact, Fiction and Folk Tales. Brill, 2016: 9-17.
• Tamas Bezsenyi. “The Great War in the Backyard: The Unsettling Case of a Rural Hit(Wo)man”. In Nari Shelekpayev, Francois-Oliver Dorais, Daria Dyakonova & Solene Maillet (eds)i. Empires, Nations and Private Lives: Essays on the Social and Cultural History of the Great War. Cambridge Scholars Publishers, 2016: 171-184.

HR.Wikipedia

____________________

As the old saying goes: divorce is better than murder.   However in a culture where young woman, that is teenage girls, are married off without their consent and divorce is not available ....

These are hardly the only examples of husband elimination.

Here is the case of Madam Popova executed in Samara, Russia in 1909 accused of over 300 such killings.

Tamas Bezsenyi, in The Spectacle of Murder comments:

"In fact, this kind of murder, the poisoning of men returning home from the war, was not a new kind of criminal activity among women, especially among rural women. In the Gendarme pocketbook (which was published every year) of 1904 an anonymous officer wrote an analysis about the poisoning crimes. He stated that this kind of crime was really well known among midwives (old women who assisted in childbirth), for whom active ingredients of various chemical agents was already known. These women distributed these agents in exchange for money or other benefits in several parts of the country. In a research group, we analysed the poisonings around Tiszazug. We found that the first case of poisoning took place in 1905. During the Horthy era the existence of poisoning can also be proven in other villages besides Tiszazug, e.g. in the county of Békés and Csongrád. Across the Danube, on the other side of Hungary, in the county of Zala, some cases also revealed the use of arsenic."

Lynn Edward Benton (1962 - ) cop, convicted of murder

Lynne Irene Benton had been a cop in the small town of Gladstone, south of Portland, Oregon, and nearby towns since 1987. She had become a detective in 1993, the same year that she married a Brazilian man to help him acquire US citizenship (they divorced a few years later). 

By 2008 Benton was a sergeant, the Public Information Officer for the Gladstone force, and taught at the local community college. She had been in a registered domestic relationship with a woman, and was working towards transition, although still presenting as female in both jobs. Benton had changed his name to Lynn Edward Benton, and been able to change his name on his driving license. 

In June 2008 Benton was the local cop summoned when Neil Beagley was found dead. While eventually Neil’s parents, who belonged to the Followers of Christ Church, would be convicted of criminally negligent homicide in denying medical care to their 16-year-old son, initially it was the duty of Benton to announce that the son himself had declined medical attention (Oregon law allows those 14 and older to make such decisions). 

During the Beagley trial in March 2010, Sergeant Benton was not called as a witness, despite being the first cop at the death scene. The lawyers did not want to confuse the jurors with Benton’s personal situation. Police Public Information Officers are often promoted to police chief, but Benton had been passed over when the former chief retired. 

Benton had broken up with his domestic partner of nine years, and had taken up with Debbie Higbee, who owned a beauty parlor in Gladstone. They were married in July 2010. 

Debbie considered that Lynn was becoming angrier and meaner, and attributed it to his taking testosterone. By the following May, Debbie was about to report him for domestic violence, which would have damaged his career. 

Benton offered $2000 to a friend, Susan Campbell, and her son Jason Jaynes, to kill his wife. They shot, beat and then strangled her. Campbell said too much revealing what she knew of the murder, and was arrested. Jaynes was arrested on charges of sex with underage girls and imprisoned for 15 years, where he admitted to another inmate that he had helped his mother do the killing. 

Benton was first placed on administrative leave, but then fired in December when pornography was found on his laptop, and because of the 1993 sham marriage – it was also said that he had not filed charges against Jayne for sex with underage girls. He became a Greyhound Bus driver.

In 2016 Irene Berg, the mother of Debbie Higbee, filed a $900,000 wrongful death lawsuit against Lynn Benton. 

At the trial in 2017, Susan Campbell, whose grand jury testimony had secured the indictment, declined to testify, despite her plea deal for a reduced sentence. Despite this Lynn Edward Benton was found guilty of arranging the murder of his wife in 2011. He was sentenced to life without parole. 

Benton is currently registered with the Oregon Department of Corrections as female and is in Oregon’s only women’s prison at Coffee Creek. (The facility also processes all new inmates, male and female. There are usually about 400 men at the facility. There are also six trans inmates there.)

• “Treatable condition killed teen in faith-healing case”. The Oregonian, June18, 2008. Online.
• Cameron Stauth. In the Name of God: The True Story of the Fight to Save Children from Faith-Healing Homicide. Thomas Dunne Books, 2013: 158, 201, 202, 205-6, 220-1, 338, 398-9, 405, 411-2, 417, 427, 440-1, 448-9.
• Stephen Mayes. “Jayson Jaynes, accused in murder conspiracy, convicted of having sex with three underage girls”. The Oregonian, Apr 18, 2014. www.oregonlive.com/oregon-city/index.ssf/2014/04/jayson_jaynes_accused_in_murde.html.
• Stephen Mayes. “Poisoned cocoa, child porn and problem witness: New details emerge in case of cop accused of killing wife”. The Oregonian, Nov 14, 2014. www.oregonlive.com/clackamascounty/index.ssf/2014/11/poisoned_cocoa_child_porn_and.html.
• Stephen Mayes. “Defense wants no mention of sex change in case of transgender cop accused of murder”. The Oregonian, June 17, 2015. www.oregonlive.com/clackamascounty/index.ssf/2015/06/defense_wants_no_mention_of_se.html.
• Colin Miner. “Murder Trial of Transgender Ex-Cop Accused of Killing Wife Underway”. Oregon City Patch, Sep 12, 2016. https://patch.com/oregon/oregoncity/opening-statements-set-tuesday-murder-trial-transgender-ex-cop.
• Everton Bailey Jr. “Judge denies new trial request from ex-cop found guilty in wife's death”. The Oregonian, Dec 23, 2016. www.oregonlive.com/clackamascounty/index.ssf/2016/12/judge_denies_new_trial_request.html.
• Stephen Mayes. “Lynn Benton, transgender man, locked up in woman's facility”. Katu, Dec 23, 2016. https://katu.com/news/local/lynn-benton-transgender-man-locked-up-in-womans-facility.

RapSheets 

___________

How far transitioned was Benton at the time of the 2010 marriage or the murder?   Stauth's book and the newspaper articles are not in agreement.  Certainly their is no mention of a doctor or clinic facilitating  transition, although he obviously has been taking male hormones.

Campbell and Jaynes apparently never did get the $2,000.





Cameron Stauth explains faith-healing homicide

Donna Perry (1952 - ) convicted of murder

From 1975 to 1998 at least 26 prostitutes in Spokane, Washington State – population 200,000 - were murdered by shooting, apparently by a trick who had sex with them first. Their bodies were dumped in rural locations.

Douglas Perry of Spokane had a history of being arrested. In 1974 he was arrested for second degree assault. In 1979 he was found guilty of a dangerous weapons violation. In 1986 he was arrested for second degree assault. In 1987 he was found guilty of reckless endangerment with a firearm. In 1988 he was found guilty of assault.

Later in 1988 Perry was arrested by Federal Agents for possession of a pipe bomb. A search of his home discovered 22 handguns (including .22 handguns), 27 rifles and 20,000 rounds of ammunition. Thus he became a convicted felon.

In 1989 Perry was arrested in Spokane for soliciting sex from prostitutes.

Three sex workers, Nickie Lowe, Kathy Brisbois and Yolanda Sapp, were murdered in February and March 1990. All three were shot with a .22 caliber gun, and their nude or partially nude bodies were found in or near the Spokane River. At the time investigators considered the three deaths to be part of the longer string of prostitute murders.

In 1994 Perry was again arrested for unlawful possession of firearms and ammunition, including a .22 handgun and a couple of .22 rifles. As a convicted felon Perry was prohibited from possessing firearms.

Perry was in prison in Oregon from January 1995 to October 1997. Other inmates later reported that he talked about taking prostitutes home, and talked in such a way that they thought that he was involved in the prostitute murders.

In December 1998, a prostitute who had serviced Perry at home, reported to the police that she saw a lot of guns, knives and a cross-bow. She identified his car and police officers stopped and searched it. They found attorney papers that said that Perry had “a gender psychosis disorder where he does not like females”, and other papers explaining gender transition.

Robert L Yates (also born 1952) was arrested in 2000, initially for one murder, but was then tied by DNA evidence to 12 more. He was convicted and sentenced to 408 years in prison. However Yates had been in the US Army, was stationed in Germany in February-March 1990, and so could not have murdered Nickie Lowe, Kathy Brisbois and Yolanda Sapp. The three murders were reassigned as cold cases.

Also in 2000 Perry became Donna and flew to Thailand for correction surgery.

In 2001, Yates was charged and convicted of two more murders of women. For this he was sentenced to death.

Perry said too much in 2007-8 when talking to an agent of the Department of Social and Health Services. She talked of shooting people, and said: “I knew I was going to end up dead or in prison again if I didn’t do something. I got gelded just like a horse and got my life back under control.”

In 2009 matter found under Ms Brisbois’ left middle fingernail was submitted for DNA analysis. A full male profile was developed and entered into the DNA Indexing System.


In 2012 Perry was again arrested by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms for unlawful possession of firearms and ammunition. A search of her home recovered more firearms. She was sentenced to 18 months and placed in a Federal Prison in Fort Worth, Texas. She boasted to her female cell-mate that she was a contract killer who had killed nine prostitutes. “He told me … becoming a woman was a disguise to take the heat off of him, that an elderly lady with mental illness would never get caught.” She also claimed to have killed two others after returning from Thailand.

A check on Perry’s DNA revealed a match to that taken from Ms Brisbois’ fingernail. A further match was found with DNA found on the blanket wrapped around Yolanda Sapp’s body, and a fingerprint match to Nickie Lowe’s purse etc. which had been recovered from a dumpster. A further search of Perry’s home found a box containing panties – but in a size too small to be her own.

In an interview in November that year Donna said: 'Douglas didn't stop, Donna stopped it,' 'I'm not going to admit I killed anybody, I didn't. Donna has killed nobody.' And 'I don't know if Doug did or not, it was 20 years ago and I have no idea whether he did or did not.' She also said that a sex change is a “permanent way to control any violence” – that it results in “a very great downturn in violence”.

In July 2017, Perry was found guilty and sentenced to three life sentences without parole.


Yates is still on Death Row. He has contested his death sentence on the ground that he “suffers from a severe paraphilic disorder” (that is necrophilia).

*not the Playboy Playmate of November 1994.

• “Woman linked to 1990 prostitute killings”. The Spokesman Review, Nov 21, 2012. www.spokesman.com/stories/2012/nov/21/woman-linked-to-1990-prostitute-killings/
• “State of Washington v. Donna Rebecca Perry also known as Douglas Robert Perry” PDF.
• “Transgender woman, 62, blames her male persona for shooting dead 3 prostitutes in 1990”. Daily Mail, 19 March 2014. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2584343/Transgender-woman-62-blames-male-persona-shooting-dead-3-prostitutes-1990.html.
• “Cellmate of transgender murder suspect says Donna Perry claimed to have killed dozens”. The Spokesman-Review, June 23, 2017. http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2017/jun/23/cellmate-of-transgender-murder-suspect-says-donna-/
• “Transgender woman sentenced to life without parole for 3 Spokane-area slayings”. The Seattle Times, July 24, 2017. www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/transgender-woman-sentenced-to-life-without-parole-for-3-spokane-area-slayings

_____________________________

Two serial killers operating at the same time!     However this book says that London, Ontario, with almost 400,000 people, had six serial killers operating at the same time.  

I think that Perry was right in exploring lower testosterone levels as a way of becoming less violent.  However if she were not trans she would simply have had herself gelded. 

Of course a gender change does not confer absolution for crimes already committed.

____________________________

Nicole Vonlee Titlow (1967 - ) convicted of murder

By her 30s, Nicole in Tennessee had been living as female for many years, was generally accepted by her family with whom she still lived, and had spent $15,000 on breast enhancements, but could not afford genital surgery.

Her aunt, Billie Jean, then 60, had married a Michigan millionaire, Don Rogers, who had made his money in car parts. Billie Jean offered that Nicole should come and visit in Troy, Michigan. Don also openly welcomed her.

Nicole and Billie Jean lived an expensive life, often in the casinos in Detroit. Billie Jean lost tens of thousands of dollars gambling. This led her husband to berate her and to threaten divorce. Don, who was 74, drank seriously, both in public and at home before bed.

In the late evening of August 12, 2000, Don was passed out on the floor, next to his bed. The two women returned home, and called the emergency services, but he was found to be dead. The police report listed his death as asphyxiation, a fatal side-effect of alcohol poisoning. He had a blood-alcohol count of .44. This was highly plausible, and he was quickly cremated. Billie Jean gave Nicole a new car and $70,000, and Nicole moved to Chicago.

Nicole had a sort-of boyfriend, and she confessed to him that she had poured vodka down Don’s throat and that Billie Jean had suffocated him with a pillow. Billie Jean, she said, had offered $100,000 for her co-operation. She also mentioned that she had been born male, and was still pre-op. The boyfriend demanded that she strip to prove the last point. The boyfriend went to the police, and they had him wear a wire and record Nicole repeating the claims. Nicole was arrested and extradited to Michigan in January 2001.

The only evidence against Billie Jean was Nicole’s account, and she was not arrested until June. Nicole’s first attorney obtained a plea bargain that she would be charged with manslaughter rather than first-degree felony murder in exchange for her testimony – this on the expectation of 7-15 years in prison. However while awaiting trial, a sheriff’s deputy advised that she should not plead guilty if she did not believe herself to be guilty. Apparently Nicole did not understand the concept of felony murder where an accomplice can be guilty even without harming the victim. She then got a new attorney who attempted to negotiate for a lower sentence, but without success. Titlow then withdrew her plea and her testimony, and Billie Jean Rogers was acquitted and released.

Billie Jean died from cancer shortly after.

This left Nicole as the only accused. She was tried for second-degree murder, convicted and sentenced to 20-40 years.

Titlow appealed citing bad advice and counsel from her second lawyer. She lost her appeal in the State and District Courts, but won in the Appeals Court. It found that Titlow’s decision to withdraw her plea and testimony was based on the offered sentence being much higher than Michigan’s guidelines for second-degree murder. Also there was no indication that the lawyer had informed Titlow of the consequences of withdrawing her plea. The Court ordered that the case be remanded and that the prosecution reoffer the original plea bargain, or that she be released.

Michigan then appealed and the case went to the US Supreme Court, which ruled that as the defendant adamantly asserted her innocence, the plea withdrawal was reasonable.

Nicole is serving her time in a men’s prison, and has been deprived of female hormones. Her health deteriorated to the point that her breasts were bleeding. She was taken to hospital for a double mastectomy, but refused the reconstruction that a woman would normally receive after such an operation.

However Nicole’s attorney managed to get her moved to a different prison which has a history of taking care of transgender prisoners.

Nicole 20 years later - prison photo

++She was released July 2023.

• Rick Hepp. “Chicagoan To Be Extradited To Michigan In Murder Case”. Chicago Tribune, January 08, 2001. Online.
• “Widow charged in cash-for-sex-change murder plot”. USAToday, 06/19/2001. Online.
• John Turk. “Prison sentence of Troy transgender murderer upheld in Supreme Court”. Oakland Press, 11/05/13. Online.
• M. William Phelps. If You Only Knew. Pinnacle, 2016.
• Chelsea Crosby. Killer Transgender: The True Story of Nicole Vonlee Titlow. CreateSpace, 2017

EN.Wikipedia (Burt v. Titlow)

John Ronald Brown: part II.

Continued from Part I.

John Ronald Brown was 69 when he got out of prison. After a period working as a taxi driver, he restarted his surgical practice in Tijuana, but this time also lived in Mexico for a while. He sometimes used the pseudonym of Juan Moreno, and as such had operating room privileges at Hospital Quintana in Playas de Tijuana, although he was not licensed to practice medicine in Mexico. By now he was favoring colon vaginoplasty. Patients would afterwards find that they smelt of rotting flesh. Many of these returned to Brown for revision (and extra billing); others ended up in emergency rooms.

Carrie, who had had vaginoplasty with a European surgeon in 1991, engaged Brown ln 1995 to enhance her labia so that she would be more in demand for nude modeling. He took a layer of skin from the inside of her mouth to sew onto her genitals. She was sent home without antibiotics or pain medicine, and it took three months to heal. A year later Brown came to her Los Angeles home to correct the results by injecting silicone.

Camille, previously an insurance underwriter, had vaginoplasty from Brown in 1997, and he punctured her rectum. Despite this she was sent home without medications or follow-up care. She then needed hospitalization for several days because of pain, complications and infections, and the recto-vaginal fistula continued to leak into her vagina. She became a stay-in, not able to go anywhere.

Mimi, who was also beautiful, was well pleased with her operation, and Brown featured her in a

Mimi

promotional video.

He had an advertising brochure:

The prettiest pussies are John Brown pussies.
The happiest patients are John Brown patients.
Because . . .
1. Each has a sensitive clit.
2. All (99%) get orgasms.
3. Careful skin draping gives a natural appearance.
4. Men love the pretty pussies and the sexy response.

Gregg Furth was a Jungian analyst who had worked with John Money on a body-modification yearning for which John Money had coined a term: apotemnophilia (the desire to have a leg amputated). They published a paper on it in 1977.

Furth experienced the yearning himself, as did his older friend, Philip Bondy, a retired satellite engineer. They built up a collection of photographs, slides and videos of male amputees.

Furth came across a newspaper article about John Brown, and flew to San Diego. He found Brown quite open-minded about a would-be amputee’s right to choose. In February 1997, Furth returned for the operation, but it was cancelled after the assisting doctor in Tijuana refused to participate when he realized just what was to happen. In 1999 they tried again. However on arrival, Furth found that his desire to be amputated had disappeared. Bondy stepped in to take the operation in his place. However he died two days later of gangrene in a motel in California. Brown was arrested and tried by the San Diego authorities, even though the operation had been done in Tijuana. 

The medical receipts showed that Bondy had paid Brown to do the amputation. This mystified the San Diego police, until trans activist Dallas Denny phoned in and suggested that they read up on apotemnophilia. This was confirmed by a police search of Furth’s apartment in New York.

The charge against Brown was upgraded from manslaughter to malice murder in the second degree, which means that the defendant does something that is dangerous to human life, knowing it is dangerous to human life and does it anyway. To make that charge stick, the prosecution needed to demonstrate that Brown had a history of being reckless. The video tapes in Brown’s apartment helped, but they also needed to find transsexuals who would testify against him.

Christina had mortgaged her house to pay for surgeries, 10 altogether, by Brown. However the skin grafts inside her vagina were so thin that they tore during intercourse. Also Brown had removed her lower ribs to give a more feminine waist: she developed an abscess there as big as a basketball. Her nose job resulted in different sized nostrils, one turned up. Brown felt bad enough that he phoned to offer a $500 refund. Her mother told him that her son had committed suicide.

Before the trial, brown pleaded guilty to practicing medicine without a license, relating to seven sex-change operations.

Carrie and Camille testified for the prosecution. Patrice Baxter was a witness for the defense. Brown was found guilty in October 1999 and sentenced to 15 years to life in prison, which he mainly served in Soledad State Prison.

Gregg Furth had met with Dr Robert Smith, a surgeon in Glasgow who had performed two elective amputations, but was then told to stop by his Hospital Trust. They wrote a book on the subject of apotemnophilia which came out in 2000.

Brown appealed in 2001, but unsuccessfully, his lawyer arguing that California was without

Brown in Soledad

jurisdiction to try him, and that the instructions on implied malice were inadequate.

For Camille, the pain got worse and worse until she died, shortly after Brown’s conviction.

Still in prison, aged 87, Brown died of health problems including pneumonia in 2010.

---------------------------------------

John Brown did over 600 mtf sex-change operations over 25 years. Some of his ex-patients are still delighted with his work. Many others are not. The motivation to trust your body to him was the apparent low price, but if you had complications, and returned for repair work, this lower price quickly disappeared.

Dallas Denny’s “The Tijuana experience” starts with a quote from Canary Conn. This is unfair. Conn was operated on in Tijuana in 1972 but by Dr Barbosa (named as Dr Lopez in her book). Brown did not start doing sex-change surgery until 1973, and did not set up in Tijuana until 1982.

I like Wendy Davidson’s idea of a peer clinic run by trans persons. It would need to contract with surgeons who were consistently rather than only intermittently good.

Cutting off someone’s leg and leaving them to die is against the law in Mexico. In addition Brown was not licensed to practice medicine in Mexico. As the crime was committed there, they should have had the first shot at prosecution. For another example of US extraterritorial enforcement see Walter L. Williams.

The EN.Wikipedia article on Apotemniphilia does not even mention John Brown.

The Murderpedia article on John Brown says “Number of victims: 1”. Camille and Christina are known to have died as a result of Brown’s bad surgey, and there are certainly others not identified.

Nicole Spray put comments on this blog in 2010 hoping to contact other patients of John Brown. I hope that that worked out well.

There are two doctor characters in fiction who could be taken to be satires of John Brown – except that they predate his work as a surgeon:

1. Dr Montag who helps Myra Breckinrige come into being in Gore Vidal’s 1968 novel.
2. Dr Benway who recurs in William Burrough’s novels including Naked Lunch, 1959 and Nova Express, 1964. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Season 5, 2004, featured a surgeon called Benway who accidentally kills patients during back-alley transgender surgery.

Perhaps we should also mention the real-life Dr Emil Petersen in Copenhagen 1953 who did an orchiectomy on  Charlotte McLeod, but left her in pain and bleeding, had been a colaborator with the Nazis, was a drug addict and stole her passport.
________________

• Herb Caen. “Plastic, Cosmetic and Reconstructive Surgery”. San Francisco Chronicle, 26 October 1973.
• John Money, Russell Jobaris & Gregg Furth, "Apotemnophilia: Two cases of self demand amputation as a sexual preference". The Journal of Sex Research. 13 (2) 1977: 115–124.
• “Transsexual Accepts Suit Settlement”. San Diego Union, March 2, 1979. Online.
• Eric Nadler. “The Incredible Dick Doctor” Penthouse Forum, January 1986: 18-25.
• Veronica Jean Brown. “He’s Back !”. Twenty Minutes, September 1989: 3-4. Online.
• Dallas Denny. “The Tijuana experience”. Alicia’s TV Girl Talk, 4(9), 18, 1992. Online.
• Bill Callahan. “Ex-doctor who served time faces murder charge”. The San Diego Union-Tribune. May 23, 1998.
• Paul Ciotti. “Why Did He Cut Off That Man's Leg?: The Peculiar Practice of Dr. John Ronald Brown”. LA Weekly. Dec 15, 1999. Online.
• Dallas Denny. “Tabletop” John Brown gets his. Transgender Forum, 1999. Online.
• Michelle Williams. “Transsexuals Tell of Botched Surgeries by Former Doctor”. Associated Press, 29 September 1999. Online.
• “People v. Brown”. Findlaw, August 02, 2001. Online.
• Michelle Moore. “Butcher John Ronald Brown”. DallasDenny.com, 2002. http://dallasdenny.com/Writing/2013/11/01/butcher-john-ronald-brown-2002.
• Gregg Furth & Robert Smith. Apotemnophilia: Information, Questions, Answers, and Recommendations About Self-Demand Amputation. 1stBooks, 2000.
• Chuck Whitlock. MediScams: How to Spot and Avoid Health Care Scams, Medical Frauds, and Quackery from the Local Physician to the Major Health Care Providers and Drug Manufacturers. Renaissance Books, 2001: chp1; 23-34.
• Joanne Meyerowitz. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Harvard University Press, 2002: 234, 271-2.
• Vern L Bullough. “Introduction”. In J. Ari Kane-Demaios and Vern L. Bullough (eds) Crossing Sexual Boundaries: Transgender Journeys, Uncharted Paths. Prometheus Books, 2005: 21-2.
• Robin Marantz Henig. “At War With Their Bodies, They Seek to Sever Limbs”. The New York Times”, March 22, 2005. Online.
• World's Worst Sex Change Surgeon, dir & scr: Jonah Weston, narrated by Mark Bazeley. UK Channel 4, 10 Apr 2007, 45 mins
• Carol Anne Davis. Doctors Who Kill: Profiles of Lethal Medics. Allison & Busby, 2011. Chp 27.
• Bianca London. “Transgender woman left disabled and horrifically disfigured by her plastic surgery addiction warns of dangers of 'quick fixes' and backstreet doctors”. The Daily Mail, 20 August 2013. Online.
• Stephen. “John Ronald Brown: World’s Worst Sex Change Surgeon”. Stranger than Fiction, April 21, 2016. Online.

Murderpedia     Wikipedia

Jo Shanley (1936 - ) machinist

Joseph Shanley of Billerica, Massachusetts, had felt since childhood that he was the wrong sex. In 1969, at age 33, Shanley went to Casablanca and had surgery with Dr Burou.

However on return Shanley continued dressing as a man to keep his job as a machinist. Shanley dressed and lived as Jo outside work.

Shanley retired in 2001, and with her sister, Ann Cavanaugh, bought a house in Claremont, New Hampshire. After a few weeks, it was apparent that the arrangement was not working, and the house was put back on the market. On October 4^th three real estate agents and two prospective buyers heard gunshots, found Shanley apparently intoxicated, and Cavanaugh dead on a bedroom floor.

Joseph Shanley was arrested, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, and was sentenced to 22 years to life. Shanley also filed a motion to be declared a woman. The state attorneys objected to the motion on procedural and jurisdictional grounds in that the court had no power to make such a ruling.

However, after Shanley's physical state was confirmed, the prosecutors were agreeable that she be placed in a Connecticut prison with a special transgender unit. A year later she was transferred to the Correctional Center for Women, in Purdy, Washington.

• Stephen Seitz. "Murderer's pre-sentence plea: I am a woman" The Union Leader, October 8, 2002. Online at: http://avitale.com/VL.238-10.14.2002.htm.
  
• "Murderer Who Had Sex Change Sentenced to Transgendered Unit". Corrections.com, 12/16/2002. www.corrections.com/articles/7993-murderer-who-had-sex-change-sentenced-to-transgendered-unit.
  
• "Prison near Purdy houses transsexual murderer". Seattle PI, December 7, 2003. www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Prison-near-Purdy-houses-transsexual-murderer-1131533.php.
  

__________________________________________________________

There are unanswered questions.   Was the sister unaware of Jo’s womanhood?   If not, what was Jo thinking in agreeing to share a house?  Shanley was presenting as male at the time of arrest, even though she had retired and moved to another town.

Synthia China-Blast (1974 - ) convicted of murder

Luis Morales grew up in the South Bronx where she always felt that she was a girl. Her sister helped her with underwear and makeup.

She was selling crack at age 13. At 16 a squatter-house burned down with six deaths, and Morales was accused of starting the fire. On remand Morales was sent to Riker's Island jail. After she had been raped a couple of times, a member of the Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation gang offered her protection in exchange for regular sex. After two years on remand, a witness recanted, and Morales was released.

However the Latin Kings now regarded her as a neophyte member. She was ordered to report to a gang member in the Bronx:

“He knew I was a gender bender, and he was putting me through it. Then he forced me to be involved with him sexually. Nobody knew. But any time he wanted me to do something, I’d have to do it. I hated him.”

In her own time she dressed more and more as female, and spent time at Escuelita, a gay club in Manhattan.

1993 was a dramatic period of internal power struggle and murders within the Latin Kings that would lead to mass arrests.

A 13-year-old girl from Harlem, Ebony Williams, ran away from home again, but was found at her sister's in Coney Island, close to where Carlos Franco, also of the Latin Kings, lived. Ebony returned home, but then ran away again the same day, August 21. The night of the next day a slashed, battered and burning body of a teenage girl was found beneath a highway overpass in the Bronx. It would be two weeks before the body was identified as Ebony Williams. A police informer who was involved in the crime, named Luis Morales and Carlos Franco as the perpetrators.

There are two accounts of what happened. The first is by journalist Esther Haynes, whose account is the only detailed account available:

[Morales] "says someone from the gang paged her and told her to report immediately: 'I had to take off my makeup, pick up my van, and go clean up an apartment in the Bronx'. In her haste, she left her skirt on. 'When I got there, there was blood all over the floor. I don’t know if I was just stupid or I’d seen a lot of The A-Team, but I just started cutting off the bloody carpet and put it in plastic bags. The body was already in a box,' Synthia says. She claims that she and a few other jittery gang members then dropped the box off in a Bronx underpass and later set it on fire." Morales hid in the "trannie-friendly" Skyway motel in Jersey City for a few days, until her mother persuaded her to turn herself in.

The other account is the New York Daily News reporting on the trial:

"Morales, 22, and Franco, 24, appeared unmoved as Bronx Supreme Court Justice Martin Marcus sentenced them to 25 years to life for the 1993 slaying. Bronx Prosecutor William Hrabsky said the two held the girl captive in a Hunts Point apartment, Morales raping her and repeatedly slashing her body. Franco was charged with killing the girl after breaking her neck. 'The suffering that this poor child went through is beyond belief and puts this crime in the category of monstrous and barbarous,' Hrabsky said. Investigators said the men shoved Ebony's body into a box and dumped it on the Sheridan Expressway at E. 165th St., where it was set on fire. They later bragged about the crime to friends, many of whom testified against them."

However Morales was convicted of murder and manslaughter, but not of rape. She commented:

"They had to switch their story in the trial because how do you tell the jury that he had on a dress and then he was raping a girl? I’ve never had sex with a female in my life.”

She was sentenced to 25 years to life, and returned to Riker's Island, where she legally changed her name to Synthia China-Blast. As a female Synthia had sex with some of the most notorious murderers and rapists in the New York prison system. In 1999 she was put on low-level female hormones, which have given her small breasts. However she was refused the higher level dosage that some other prisoners are on in that she did not have an official prescription before incarceration. She is suing for medical treatment up to and including genital surgery.

In 2002 Synthia was transferred to Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York. The next year she attempted but failed to castrate herself, and then took up with the 35-year-old then virgin copycat serial killer Eddie Seda, and in effect became his wife. In 2004, after she was transferred to Wende Correctional Facility, she sent a letter to the New York Daily News as by the Zodiac Killer’s Wife, in which she said:

“If I was a real woman I could bring about little future serial killers to terrorize NYC like my husband did. How [New Yorkers] would of loathed the Zodiac Children”.

In 2014 the Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP) focused on Synthia China-Blast as part of its project of ending the practice of isolating trans prisoners in solitary. The SRLP asked Laverne Cox to read a letter from Synthia China-Blast on video, but did not share details with her about the murder of Ebony Williams. When apprised of the details, Laverne Cox, asked for the video to be removed.

• Michael T. Kaufman. "About New York; How Can Murdered Girl Be Missed by No One?". The New York Times, September 1, 1993. www.nytimes.com/1993/09/01/nyregion/about-new-york-how-can-murdered-girl-be-missed-by-no-one.html.
  
• Robert D. McFadden. "Slain Girl Is Identified As Runaway From Harlem". The New York Times, September 3, 1993. www.nytimes.com/1993/09/03/nyregion/slain-girl-is-identified-as-runaway-from-harlem.html.
  
• Jorge Fitz-Gibbon. "2 Kings Get Life In Rape Slay Of Girl, 13". New York Daily News, November 5, 1996. www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/2-kings-life-rape-slay-girl-13-article-1.737954.
  
• Esther Haynes. "Kiss of the Scorpion Woman: Eddie Seda, the copycat Zodiac Killer, and Synthia-China Blast, a preop transsexual Latin King, fell in love. Scenes from an Attica marriage.". New York Magazine, Apr 19, 2004. http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/crimelaw/features/n_10181.
  
• John Marzulli. "Zodiac 'wife' curses fate Weird killer couple separated in prison". New York Daily News, May 31, 2004. www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/zodiac-wife-curses-fate-weird-killer-couple-separated-prison-article-1.645709.
  
• Sarah Karlan. "Laverne Cox Reads A Letter From A Transwoman Currently In Prison". BuzzFeed, www.buzzfeed.com/skarlan/laverne-cox-reads-a-letter-from-a-transwoman-currently-in-pr#2nrl811.
  
• Louise Pennington. "Synthia China Blast: convicted for the rape, murder and abuse of the corpse of thirteen-year-old Ebony Nicole Williams". My Elegant Gathering of White Snows, August 22, 2014. http://elegantgatheringofwhitesnows.com/?p=1923.
  
• Gallus Mag. "Laverne Cox launches media campaign in support of transwoman Synthia China Blast: convicted for the rape, murder and abuse of the corpse of thirteen-year-old Ebony Nicole Williams". Gender Trender, August 22, 2014. https://gendertrender.wordpress.com/category/women.
  
• Parker Molloy. "Laverne Cox Distances Herself From Controversial Trans Inmate". Advocate, August 26 2014. www.advocate.com/politics/transgender/2014/08/26/laverne-cox-distances-herself-controversial-trans-inmate.
  

tumblr   SRLP   MetaFilter
___________________________________________________________

The murder of Ebony Williams is of course monstrous and barbarous.   However there is a possibility that a wrong person is being punished for it, which makes the crime even worse.

As with several accounts of inmates, we do not have all the facts.   The account in New York Magazine by Esther Haynes is the only one to go into details.

Gallus Mag, Laverne Cox and Parker Molloy all say that Synthia China-Blast was convicted of rape.   This is not correct.   She was convicted of murder and manslaughter, but not rape.   Her prison sex life has been in the female role, and she claims (plausibly) that she has never had sex with a woman.   I am inclined to accept this.

Synthia’s 2004 Zodiac Killer’s Wife letter was of course a stupid thing to do.

There was a third person at the murder, the police informer.   We really need to know about this person who would seem to be escaping his own guilt by blaming another.   We are told nothing about him except the simple fact of his existence.   Nor are we told anything about Carlos Franco, except his guilt.

The Wikipedia article on the Latin Kings tells us that from June 1993 to February 1994 there was an internal power struggle within the Latin Kings in New York.  7 Latin Kings were murdered, and afterwards the police were able to charge 20 major members with murder and racketeering.   Ebony Williams’ murder in August 1993 falls right within this period.    No journalist has bothered to explain if there is a connection.

If we go with the account by Esther Haynes, Morales was a bottom level functionary in the Latin Kings who did not dare to refuse an order.   Cleaning up after the murder makes Morales an accessory, and disposing of the body is also a crime.   However no motive was cited as to why Morales wanted to murder Ebony Williams, and the silence about just what the police informer actually did makes the conviction of Morales a very unsafe conviction.

Gallus Mag, Laverne Cox and Parker Molloy all have such faith in the patriarchal justice system that they do not consider that Synthia China-Blast may be a victim also.  Even the SRLP seems to consider her conviction a safe conviction, and are only concerned about the extra punishment of being 23 hours a day in solitary.

If Synthia China-Blast’s guilt is only that of being an accessory, and an accessory under duress at that, then her sentence is certainly excessive.

If Synthia China-Blast were in the UK, she would be in a women’s prison under the 2011 New Prison Guidelines.   If she is guilty only of being an accessory, then she is no danger in a women’s prison.   Even if she were guilty of the murder, there are equally violent women in women’s prisons, and the system is able to manage them.

Gallus Mag seems to be obsessed that a male-bodied person convicted of rape must not be allowed to have his/her penis and testosterone removed (=genital surgery).  See also Sandy-Jo Battista.   This is a very strange position.

Paris Green (1991 - ) convicted of murder

In March 2013 Paris Green was in the early phase of transition and living in Glenrothes, Fife.  She and two others, Kevin McDonagh and Dean Smith, who had served in Afghanistan, invited Robert Shankland, who had previously helped her out with a place to stay, to Green's flat for drinks. Apparently a row developed over buying a bag of chips, and Shankland was battered, kicked, a ligature tied around his neck and a plastic bag was pulled over his head. Shankland, who suffered from heart disease, died.

They then sold his phone to buy ham sandwiches. A female friend of Green dropped by and they

actually boasted about the death, and showed her the body. She fled and contacted the police.

After conviction at Glasgow's high court, all three were sentenced to a minimum of 18 years each. Green was sent to Cornton Vale prison for women, the only such prison in Scotland. It was also announced that transgender surgery would be arranged for Green on the NHS, which would have to be in England. The Shankland family, supported by some politicians, objected that Green should lose her right to transgender surgery as part of her punishment.

Soon Green was found to be having sex with other inmates, and after warnings was moved to the women's section of Edinburgh's Saughton Prison.

*Not the Houston band.

• Charlene Wilson. "Three people charged with Glenrothes murder". The Courier, 29 March 2013. www.thecourier.co.uk/news/local/fife/three-people-charged-with-glenrothes-murder-1.80429.
• "Three people sentenced to life for 'wicked' murder of man at party". STV News, 8 November 2013. http://news.stv.tv/east-central/247698-three-people-killed-robert-shankland-after-inviting-him-to-party.
• Daniel Miller "Murderer who killed a man following a row over a bag of chips will serve his life sentence in a women's prison after arranging taxpayer-funded sex change". The Daily Mail, 9 November 2013. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2494991/Murderer-born-man-sentenced-life-womens-prison-arranging-sex-change-taxpayers-money.html.
• Aileen Robertson. "‘A male should be in a male prison’ — victim’s family say murderer Paris Green is being ‘rewarded’". The Courier, 12 November 2013. www.thecourier.co.uk/news/local/fife/a-male-should-be-in-a-male-prison-victim-s-family-say-murderer-paris-green-is-being-rewarded-1.152307.
• Damien Gayle. "Male transgender prisoner guilty of brutal murder is moved from women's jail 'because he kept having sex with female inmates' while waiting for sex-change op funded by UK taxpayer". The Daily Mail, 17 December 2013. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2525441/Transgender-murderer-Paris-Green-moved-womens-prison-sex-inmates.html.

____________________________________________________________

Trivia: paris green is a highly toxic inorganic compound used to kill insects and rodents. 

Leslie Nelson (1957 - ) warehouse worker, sex worker, inmate.

Glenn Nelson was regarded as an emotionally disturbed child as early as kindergarten. During his teen years he became increasingly reclusive, relating to no-one other than his mother. He identified as female, and from 1984 was considering a sex change. In 1986 he twice traveled to Colorado to consult with Dr Biber, and began taking female hormones.

The same year Nelson was robbed at knifepoint in Philadelphia, and in response purchased a handgun. In 1987 he was arrested for felony possession of a weapon and dum-dum bullets. He served sixty days, received probation and had to have psychological evaluation. It was now illegal for him to possess a firearm.

He contemplated suicide. He resumed taking estrogens, and had breast augmentation. Leslie completed the sex change in 1992, despite a sex therapist declaring that psychological problems remained, although she was at risk of suicide if denied the change. The transgender program at Pennsylvania Hospital rejected her because she had a depressive disorder, and they felt that she did not feel like a woman in a man's body.

On returning to her warehouse job, Leslie was severely harassed and quit. She tried to be an exotic dancer, but was clumsy, and also failed to pass as female. She became a hooker in Camden, New Jersey.

On April 20, 1995, Nelson shot and killed two police officers, John McLaughlin and John Norcross, and wounded a third, Richard Norcross, John's brother, in a shootout at her parent’s home at Haddon Heights, New Jersey. She had refused to produce her gun, an AK-47 assault rifle on the policemen’s first visit after a neighbor had suggested that she had fondled her niece, and when they returned with a warrant she opened fire.

Leslie Nelson, with public defender Joe Krakora,

She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to death by lethal injection for the murder of Officer John Norcross and life in prison with thirty years of parole ineligibility for the Murder of Investigator John McLaughlin. She was given a consecutive ten-year term with five years of parole ineligibility for the second-degree assault of Detective Richard Norcross. For a while she was the only transsexual on death row in the US in an all-male institution. Nelson's lawyers contended that a) she was under the influence of extreme mental or emotional disturbance; b) her capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of her conduct was significantly impaired as the result of a mental disease, but not to a degree that would allow her to plead the insanity defense. They also cited the civil suit filed by the surviving officer, Richard Norcross, to the effect that police guidelines for such high risk situations were inadequate.

The New Jersey Supreme Court twice ruled that executing ‘such a mentally ill and psychologically disturbed person’ would be cruel and unusual punishment., and with the agreement of the prosecution, she was sentenced to three life sentences, with a 65-year bar on parole. This permitted her to be transferred to the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women, in Clinton, New Jersey.

She was Inmate of the Month at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility in August 2005 for tutoring other inmates.

*Not Leslie Nielsen, the Hollywood comedy actor.

• John Nordheimer. "Shooting Suspect Surrenders After 2 Officers Are Killed". The New York Times, April 22, 1995. www.nytimes.com/1995/04/22/nyregion/shooting-suspect-surrenders-after-2-officers-are-killed.html.
  
• John Way Jennings. "Accused Killer Of Lawmen Faces Death Penalty Leslie Nelson Was Indicted Yesterday. The Standoff In Haddon Heights Left Two Officers Dead, One Hurt.". Philadelphia Inquirer, June 22, 1995. http://articles.philly.com/1995-06-22/news/25691554_1_murder-of-police-officers-leslie-nelson-gas-mask.
  
• Aamer Madhani. "No Change Of Venue In Murder Case Leslie Nelson Pleaded Guilty To Killing Two Officers. Jury Selection Is Set For Jan. In A New Sentencing Trial.". Philadelphia Inquirer, Dec 13, 2000. http://articles.philly.com/2000-12-13/news/25580462_1.
  
• J. Zazzali. “State vs Leslie Ann Nelson”. New Jersey Court Cases. www.romingerlegal.com/new_jersey/supreme/a-29-01.opn.html.
  
• "A Question of Death". South Jersey.com, May 2005. www.southjersey.com/articles/?articleID=12827.

 CRIME LIBRARY

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The Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women quite sensibly employed only female guards.  The following is from the Wikipedia page:

A class action lawsuit was filed on behalf of male correctional officers alleging that the policy of only employing female officers was discriminatory. In 1991, the state entered into a consent agreement allowing male correctional officers to work at Edna Mahan.

The addition of male officers resulted in problems leading to additional legal action. Officers were disciplined, fired, or criminally prosecuted for offenses including exchanging sexual favors for gifts or money.