Liz Eden and Dog Day Afternoon: Part II - Imprisonment, the Movie and one more wedding

Trigger warning. This 3-part article contains quotations from John Wojtowicz, the major protagonist. The quotations contain frequent misgenderings, and in the latter 2 parts traditional English swear words. Caveat Lector.

Part I: Two Weddings and a Bank Robbery
Part II: Imprisonment, the Movie and one more wedding
Part III: Release, a final wedding and afterwards (and Bibliography)

A month after the robbery there was an extensive write up in Life magazine, “The Boys in the Bank”, which prophetically described John Wojtowicz as having “the broken-faced good looks of an Al Pacino or Dustin Hoffman”.

Arthur Bell’s investigation of claims that Wojtowicz had been set up by the Gambino family brought bomb threats to the Village Voice. At Gay Activist Alliance (GAA) meetings

“conservative and radical gays debated over whether Wojtowicz was a counterrevolutionary lumpen adventurer victimized by the mob or a proud gay superfly caught in an act of righteous expropriation, but the debate was inconclusive.” (Holm, 1976)

A bartender friend of Sal Naturale asked GAA to help fund a burial.  They declined and Sal was interred in the gigantic pauper burial site on Hart Island off the Bronx coast (which contains over a million corpses).

While in The Bayview Correctional Facility, 550 West 29^th St, John Wojtowicz wrote a will in which he allotted a portion of the proceeds from his life insurance to pay for Liz Eden’s operations.

Warner Brothers wanted to turn the Life magazine article into a film.

“They came down to make the movie deal when I was in prison, and I told them, ‘I’m not making no movie, ’cos you’re gonna make me look ridiculous.’ So they brought Ernie down from the nut house, and they brought me in and let me fuck him in the warden’s office, at the old federal prison on West Street in the Village. They brought him down there, and Ernie had the paper, and he said, ‘Sign the paper.’ I said, ‘I ain’t signing that paper.’ He goes, ‘Well, don’t you want me to have the sex change?’ I go, ‘Yeah.’ He says, ‘Well, if you sign this, they’re gonna take me outta the nut house, I’m gonna get the sex change. And I’ll come and see you.’ And I says, ‘OK, let’s fuck.’ And he goes, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘Well, we’ll seal the deal with a fuck.’ So the warden left, you know, and we stayed in there, and we got down. In fact, I fucked him on the warden’s desk.” (Photos-Wojtowicz, 2003: 61)

Wojtowicz mug shot

Wojtowicz thinking that he had a deal pleaded guilty. He had sold his story for $7,500 and 1% of the net profit, but he had to sue (from prison) to get it. Liz was to get $2,500 for the operation. She returned to the West 10^th Street apartment. However, with the publicity about the film, the landlord realized who she was and evicted her.  She found a place in a gay rooming house in Brooklyn.

Wojtowicz was sentenced to 20 years, and placed in a federal penitentiary at Lewisburg. Pennsylvania.

As Carmen and John were still married, she visited him in prison. She was not pleased to encounter Liz Eden, also visiting. However the two somewhat became friends. Carmen called her when she had an orchiectomy with Dr Benito Rish in Yonkers in November 1972. She had a vaginoplasty the following March.

“He got out of the nut house . . . [but] they only gave him some of the money for the operation, not enough. So I had to have my mother and my wife [Carmen] give him more money. I signed the paper in November of ’72.”. After the operations Liz came to see John one last time, and explained that the doctors had told her to break off with him, and go somewhere else to be a woman. (Photos-Wojtowicz, 2003: 61-2).

John then attempted suicide, the evening before he was to be sentenced.

The working title of the film was, like the Life magazine article, Boys in the Bank, a riff on the successful pre-gay-lib gay drama, Boys in the Band, 1970. Director Sidney Lumet did not like this, and wanted something that suggested a hot, stuffy day near the end of summer. Thus it became Dog Day Afternoon – although without accuracy in reference to the rising of Sirius at the hottest days of summer. However the film was shot in late autumn, and the actors had to chew ice cubes so that their breath would not be seen. Sidney Lumet, the director was quoted as saying that Pacino was at risk because “no major star that I know of had ever played a gay man”.

The trans component in the film is quite small. The Liz-John wedding is not shown. The lover, Leon (=Ernest, and played by Chris Sarandon, Susan’s then husband), who appears for only a few minutes, is presented as a mid-70s gay stereotype, who has been informed by the shrinks that he is a woman trapped in man's body. He does not seem to be too happy with this conclusion. Despite its dubious portrayal of Leon, the film was much applauded for featuring a sympathetic, fully-rounded bisexual male. There is no mention of mafia contacts. Wojtowicz may, as Life Magazine said, have resembled Al Pacino, but the connection was secured as Pacino was cast as Sonny Wortzik (=Wojtowicz). Wojtowicz afterwards became known as the Dog because of the film. John Cazale, who had starred with Pacino in the The Godfather films, was cast as Salvatore despite being 37 rather than the real Sal’s 18. The film Sal insists that he is not gay – in contradistinction to the real one. Sal is the only character in the film to have the same name as the corresponding real person.

Wojtowicz commented on the film:

“Well, they never tell you I was against him having the operation all along. And the only reason I decided to let him have the operation was because I wanted to save his life. Therefore, saving his life was the number one thing, and as long as you’re trying to save somebody’s life, whatever you’re doing’s not wrong. And I loved him enough to do that. That never comes across in the book or the movie. It’s just like, they make fun of my fat wife, Carmen, and they [implicitly] say, well, if you had a wife that was fat and had a big mouth, no wonder you went with the drag queen. But that’s a lie. I didn’t go with the drag queen because my wife was fat or ugly. To me, my wife was beautiful. And I like big women! ’Cos I like the Sophia Loren/Elizabeth Taylor type. The reason I broke up with my wife is because of our in-laws, and because I’m what you call an old-fashioned Italian: I’m the boss. Her parents would always interfere with us, and she would always take the parents’ side over me. And that’s what led to the breakup. …  And [Sal] was gay, not like the movie tells you. He never said, “Tell them there ain’t two homosexuals in there,” ’cos he was a chicken hawk. He liked young guys and he had an apartment in the Village and he used to bring kids up there.” (Photos-Wojtowicz, 2003: 54, 57.)

Pacino took the film to Lewisburg Penitentiary before the official release intending to introduce the film. However the warden initially refused to allow the film to be shown even though Warner Brothers were offering it without cost. Wojtowicz made a fuss, and was supported by gay and straight newspapers on the outside, and the warden relented. However several of the other inmates after seeing it took the film to be saying that he had sold out Sal. Wojtowicz was subsequently beaten up and his cell set on fire. He had to be moved to a different prison.

Carmen visited him in the prison hospital. An attendant said to her: “Oh, you’re the other wife”, and she was informed that Liz was listed as next of kin. That was it. She went to see a divorce lawyer.

Liz

Carmen Wojtowicz sued Warner Brothers for invasion of privacy and unauthorized used of her and her children’s names and portraits.

Liz Eden sued Warner Brothers for libel and they settled out-of-court. Word was that Liz received somewhere between $25,000 and $50,000. For a while she had an agent and there was talk of a book deal, a nightclub act and even a discotheque to be called ‘The Garden of Eden’.

Wojtowicz started an affair in prison with George, a jailhouse lawyer, black, Irish and Jehovah’s Witness. They were married in the prison yard by a Jesus Freak. George got Wojtowicz’ sentence reduced and he was released in November 1979, but was then returned for parole violations such as still seeing George.

----------

$2,500 in 1975 is $14,500 now.

It was standard practice at the time for sex-change doctors to tell their patients to break off all gay contacts and go live somewhere where their prior self was not known.

While Wojtowicz was not in any way co-ordinating with the heliacal rising of Sirius, the date of the rising has moved – because of the precession of the equinox – from 19 July at the time of the Caesars to the third week of August now.  If you are 50° north or more, it is on 21/22 August.

“no major star that I know of had ever played a gay man”. Presumably Lumet, although in the film-biz had not heard of Dirk Bogart in Victim, 1961. However this was a New York film being edgier than anything from Los Angeles.

Sidney Lumet has made many great thrillers and crime films, and is known for his social concerns and depictions of minorities, however the gender variant persons in his films are either minor or get killed: a mannish lesbian briefly glimpsed in The Group, 1966; Jack Doroshow (Sabrina) in mufti in The Anderson Tapes, 1971; heterosexist female impersonator, Gypsy Haake has a cameo in The Morning After, 1986; International Chrysis' character is killed, and the other trans women are humiliated by Nick Nolte's bad cop in Q & A, 1990.

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.

San Quentin Prison, California

(All photographs within the prison via the Digital Transgender Archive)

San Quentin is one of the world’s best-known prisons. It is the oldest and largest in California, and the only one in the state where executions have been done. It is known for recorded concerts by Johnny Cash and BB King.

The prison was opened in 1852. It was so named as it is located on San Quentin Point. That, also, is not named for the 3^rd century saint in Gaul. It is named for a renowned sub-chief of the Coast Miwok first nation.

There has been more drag and trans at San Quentin than you might expect.

See also: Trans in prison which I wrote in November 2012.

Part I: to the conviction of Oscar Wilde

Part II: to Stonewall

Part III: to Farmer v. Brennan

Part IV: to the Synthia Kavanagh Human Rights Case

Part V: to the National Offender Management Service, New prison guidelines, 2011

Part VI: Comments & Bibliography

1914

Artie Baker, 14 years for bank robbery, San Francisco, was in San Quentin for some time before being discovered to be female-bodied. (Peter Boag. Re-dressing America's Frontier Past, 2012: 211)

Prison Vaudeville Show featured cross-dressed prisoners.

1915

Prison Vaudeville Show again featured cross-dressed prisoners.

1930

The 17th annual field meet held at San Quentin in 1930 when James B. Holohan was the acting warden. Olympic Club member, Frank G. Kane, was Master of Ceremonies. The entertainers depicted are San Quentin inmates; the cross-dressers were a popular attraction.

1933

20th Annual Olympic Club Track & Field Meet at San Quentin prison was sponsored by the Olympic Club of San Francisco. Prison inmates held a field and track day. Consisted of some 29 athletic events, stunts, chorus girls and vaudeville acts performed by prisoners. Some 5000 inmates attended.

1940

• Leo L.Stanley & Evelyn Wells. Men at Their Worst. By L. L. Stanley ... with the collaboration of Evelyn Wells. Illustrated. [The autobiography of the Chief Surgeon of the California State Prison, St. Quentin.], 1940: 203. Dr Stanley relates that while examining an apparently male prisoner, he discovered that the prisoner had been surgically transformed into a woman.

1950

Josephine Montgomery was arrested and convicted of strong-arm robbery. After two months in the women’s wing of the Imperial county jail, and one night in the women’s prison at Tehachapi, a routine physical exam resulted in a transfer to a man’s cell at San Quentin. NewsArticle.

1972

Katherine Marlowe, author of Mr Madame, 1964, met her future husband while lecturing at San Quentin prison, and finally transitioned to female in 1972. (Richard Nelson. Call Me Kate: The Story of Katherine Marlowe, a Transexual, 1999)

1980

Guthrie Danowski, 24, who was serving a life sentence at the prison, apparently slipped into some of his wife's clothing in a restroom of the crowded prison visiting room. His wife arrived at the prison early in the day, checking out two hours after her arrival. About five hours after that, San Quentin officials realized that Danowski was missing. (The Gateway, 2,12, June 1980: 9. Online)

1990

Janet Kolmetz on death row at San Quentin – at that time the only known trans woman in San Quentin. (TV-TS Tapestry, 55, 1990: 15-6. Online)

1998

Jeanne Hoff, the last doctor at Harry Benjamin’s practice, had become returned to being a psychiatrist after transition in the 1980s, and was employed at San Quentin. She was in the news in April-May 1998 when she was the only one of three psychiatrists to testify that murderer Horace Kelly might be competent to be executed, and the defense attorney attempted to impeach Hoff. Although Horace Kelly's lawyer subpoenaed Hoff's prison personnel file in an attempt to impeach her, he presumably hadn't heard rumors that she was transsexual, didn't find it in the file and didn't read her. Otherwise he probably would have used it to defame her. She had been in a 1978 television special under the same name, but that was 20 years earlier. Jeanne was also named as trans in Jayne County's 1995 autobiography, but presumably the lawyer didn't read punk biographies. GVWW.

2008

• Stuart Cabb (dir). Louis Theroux: Behind Bars, with Deborah Worledge. UK BBC 60 mins 2008. Deborah was filmed shortly before her release on Sept. 2, 2008. Two days after release she was dead from a drug overdose.

2009

Skylar Deleon, who had killed to be able to afford transgender surgery, arrived at San Quentin death row.

2014

Mandi Camille Hauwert,  Correctional Officer at San Quentin. One of the first US Correctional Officers to transition on the job. Another is Meghan Frederick who works at the state prison in Sacramento.

2015

Lady Jae Clark, who came out in 1973 and has been in San Quentin since 2013, was the first trans woman to play Lady Macbeth in San Quentin’s production of the play. Newsarticle.  She co-founded a program called Acting with Compassion and Truth (ACT) in San Quentin to increase understanding and decrease violence toward LGBTQ inmates. Newsarticle.

Trans woman at San Quentin approached the Insight Prison Project. They asked for support for the formation of Acting with Compassion and Truth (ACT) at San Quentin. They didn’t want a support group. “We live our lives here every day surrounded by thousands of people who have been for the last 20 or 30 years who haven’t had exposure to the evolution that we know is happening out there.” A year-long curriculum was set up. Newsarticle.

Shiloh Heavenly Quine, incarcerated at Mule Creek State Prison was approved for transgender surgery, which set a precedent so that other trans inmates in California could hope.

• Kristin Schreier Lyseggen,. The Women of San Quentin: Soul Murder of Transgender Women in Male Prisons. 2015: 109 – 136. About trans women in prisons, but most are not in San Quentin, despite the title of the book.

2018

Lisa Strawn who transitioned at age 18, but has been in men’s prisons for 25 years following a three-strikes burglary charge, who had helped establish an LGBTQ group at Vacaville prison, was transferred to San Quentin and joined ACT. Newsarticle.

2019

The LGBTQ education program was replicated on death row. Newsarticle.

First TDOR at San Quentin’s Catholic Chapel emceed by Lisa Strawn, the first such in a California prison. Newsarticle.

Child killer death row inmate Jessica Hann filed for change of name and legal gender.

Michelle Confait (1945 – 1972) sex worker

Confait, born in the Seychelles, but living in London, had been raised with the name Maxwell but preferred Michelle.

Michelle

In the early 1970s she was working as a trans prostitute, and in 1971 was arrested for importuning and served five months in HMP Wormwood Scrubs (a men's prison) where she was protected by and provided sexual favours to Douglas Franklin.

On release she frequented the Black Bull Pub (later the Fox and Firkin) in Lewisham High Street where she met Winston Goode, an occasional transvestite. Goode had broken up with his wife although she and their children still lived in the same house in Doggett Road, Catford. Michelle became a lodger in the house at £2.50 a week.

A fire started in the early morning of 22 April 1971. Goode awoke, evacuated his wife and children and ran to Catford Bridge railway station, almost next door, to dial 999. The Fire Brigade arrived and extinguished the fire within ten minutes. They also found a body, later identified as Michelle Confait. Unusually the police surgeon did not take a rectal temperature to establish time of death as the senior policeman remarked that the body was a ‘possible homosexual’ and he did not wish to destroy any evidence of recent sexual activity. It was established that Confait had been strangled and there was no struggle.

The first suspect was Goode – for example why was he in his day clothes rather than his night clothes when he ran to ring the fire brigade? He was held at the police station all day and medically examined. He mentioned that Confait planned to move out, and admitted jealousy, but also denied that they were lovers. The Detective Chief Superintendent later commented that he was such a weak individual that he would have confessed under interrogation if guilty. A few days later Goode was admitted to Bexley Psychiatric Hospital, apparently unable to remember the previous few days.

There were a few other fires in the area in the next few days. An 18-year old with the mental age of eight, and two younger boys were arrested and interrogated without either their parents or a social worker being present. They were tried at the Old Bailey. Mr Justice Chapman described the victim as “an odd creature, and indeed it may be your view that he has been no great loss to this world”. The three boys were found guilty of manslaughter, despite having alibis for the estimated time of death, and claims of being hit by the police. Nor was it explained why they would kill Confait, and having done so, then wait several hours before setting the house on fire.

In May 1974 Goode swallowed cyanide and died – several publications had hinted that he was involved in the crimes. The next year Mrs Goode was quoted in the media that her husband had once tried to kill her, and she was certain that he had started the fire and murdered Confait.

Also in 1975 the new Labour Home Secretary Roy Jenkins referred the case to the Court of Appeal with the result that all three boys were found not guilty and freed. The judge particularly criticised the police for not putting more emphasis on the fact that there had been no struggle.

The house in Murder Houses of South London

In 1976 Douglas Franklin and Paul Pooley were sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment, partly as a result of Franklin informing on Pooley. Pooley attempted to appeal but Franklin declined to give evidence. The two men were increasingly at odds, and other inmates said that Franklin was fearful of being incriminated for the Confait murder. Pooley was later quoted (with typical misgenderings):

“I tagged around with Doug and he took me down to Confait’s house in Catford. We both had a lot to drink by the time we got there and Doug was fooling around with Confait. Max put a record on and Doug started dancing with him. He was twisting a scarf around his neck. I Don’t know where it came from but suddenly I realised that a bit of fun was ceasing to be a joke. Max went blue in the face and fell to the ground.” 

In 1980 a high-level police report identified Franklin as the killer. It also confirmed that the time of death was 48 hours earlier than stated at trial. It had been assumed that rigor mortis started after the discovery of the fire. In fact, Confait had been dead for 48 hours and rigor was wearing off. The report concluded that had the boys not been arrested, Douglas Franklin would probably have become a suspect at an early stage of the original murder enquiry. Franklin committed suicide shortly afterwards.

27 Doggett Rd in Google St View

In the late 1970s and early 1980s there were other flagrant miscarriage of justice cases, Birmingham Six, Guildford Four, Cardiff Three etc, and following a report by a former High Court Judge, the government set up the Royal Commission of Criminal Procedure which ultimately led to Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE), 1984,  and the Crown Prosecution Service under the Prosecution of Offenders Act 1985 – which decides independently of the police whether a prosecution will proceed.

• Satish Sekar. “Failure”. Fitted In: Social Justice, Legal Issues, July 2, 2014. Online.
• Satish Sekar. “Douglas Franklin”. Fitted In: Social Justice, Legal Issues, July 1, 2014. Online.
• Satish Sekar. “Paul Pooley”. Fitted In: Social Justice, Legal Issues, July 1, 2014. Online.
• Jan Bondeson. Murder Houses of South London. Troubador Publishing, 2015: 171-7.
• Kate More. “Testimonies of HIV Activism” in Kate More & Stephen Whittle (eds) . Reclaiming Genders: Transsexual Grammars at the Fin de Siecle. Routledge, 2016: 137.
• “The Maxwell Confait Muder”. Lewisham Heritage, 25 August 2018. Online.
• Jon Rogers. “INJUSTICE FIGHT What happened to Maxwell Confait and was his murder case ever solved?”. The Sun, 23 Oct 2019. Online.
• Jon Robbins. “Cases that changed us : Maxwell Confait”.  Justice Gap, 21 November 2019. Online.
• Paul Rock. The Official History of Criminal Justice in England and Wales: Volume II: Institution-Building. Routledge, 2019: 253-308, 290nn88, 94.

EN.Wikipedia       LGBTArchive

Two mafiosi

Giovanni Arrivoli (1975 - 2016) 

Post-transition Giovanna Arrivole was arrested with 17 others for drug dealing, and was released in 2012. He still owned a café bar, the Blue Moon in Campania, which was said to be a meeting place for the Pagano Amato crime family – although others say that he refused to be involved with Amato Pagano, and still others say that he wanted to become a Camorrista boss.

In 2016 he went missing, and three days later was found partially buried and face-down near Melito di Napoli. He had been shot three times.

So far nobody has been tried for the murder.

• Chris Summers. “Transsexual mafia boss who had a sex-change op to become a man is found tortured and killed near Naples”. Daily Mail, 13 May 2016. Online.
• Dario del Porto. “La vera storia di Giò, eliminata per un rifiuto ai narcos. Non volle mettersi in affari con loro”. Napoli Republia, 17 maggio 2016. Online. Translation.
• Jean-Philippe Savry. “Napoli: la Camorra dézingue aussi 38 bis”, “ Napoli : la Camorra dézingue aussi 56”, “La Camorra en Espagne partie 6”.  jean-philippe.savry.over-blog.com/search/arrivoli/.

Lucia Aviello (19?? - ) 

Aviello had been raised as Luciano. Luciano and brother Antonio were involved with the Camorra, and in 2007 they were living in Perugia in Umbria.

On 1 November 2007 Meredith Kercher, an exchange student from the University of Leeds was studying in Perugia, and was murdered. Her US flatmate, Amanda Knox and Knox’ boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were charged with the killing, and Rudy Guede, whose fingerprints were found at the scene of the crime was tried separately and found guilty.

Meanwhile Luciano was convicted and in jail, and was Raffaele’s cell-mate. Antonio had been killed. Luciano sent letters to the authorities saying that Antonio with an unnamed Albanian had planned a robbery but went to the wrong address, that of Kercher who was killed when she screamed. Aviello’s testimony was contradicted by other cell-mates who claimed that Aviello boasted about being paid to make the claim. Also he has eight previous convictions for slander.

Aviello was called to testify at the Supreme Court of Cassation on 4 October 2013. By then she had started transition, and asked to be referred to as Lucia. She repeated that her brother had committed the murder, and denied receiving any payments. She said that she knew where the murder weapon and Kercher’s keys were hidden, having been given them to hide. Other cell-mates were called and repeated her boasts of having been paid. Because she was not considered credible, the police did not search for the weapon and keys – another knife, believed to be the murder weapon, had already been submitted for forensic analysis.

Aviello was convicted and sentenced to 10 months in May 2014 for oltraggio (offending the judiciary – similar to contempt of court), and was also charged with slander against her brother.

• Tom Kington. “Amanda Knox retrial: mafia gangster claims brother was killer” The Guardian, 4 Oct 2013.  Online.
•  Egle Priolo. “Omicidio Meredith, la verità del pentito: «Confermo, è stato mio fratello»” Il Gazzettino, 4 Ottobro 2013. Online. Translation.

Themurderofmeredithkercher(The Prison Informants)

Cristina Ortiz Rodríguez (1964 - 2016 ) sex worker, singer, prisoner.

++I originally wrote about Cristina Otiz in May 2008.  A lot has happened to her since then.

Cristina was born José Antonio Ortiz Rodriguez, the fourth of six children, in Adra, Almeria, Andalusia. Jose became known as Joselita.  From an early age Joselita showed talent in fashion design.  She was never accepted because of her gender expression and was attacked and mistreated, but as a man was considered to have good physique and was awarded the title Mister Andalusia in 1989 at the age of 24.  Still as José Antonio, Ortiz entered a competition on television in 1991 and won a trip to Thailand.

Ortiz had been secretly dressing as a woman, and in January 1992 she went to Madrid and began  transition.

Cristina was working as a prostitute in 1996 when she was discovered by television host and journalist Pepe Navarro who was doing a story on trans people. He hired her, and she became famous on his television shows Esta noche cruzamos el Mississippi and La sonrisa del pelícano, and with a music single ‘Veneno pa tu piel’ (Poison in your skin). She became known as Cristina La Veneno (the poison).

There was a plan to make a film about her life, but it did not happen. She starred in two porn films:  El secreto de la Veneno and La venganza de la Veneno, both 1997.  She toured Spain as a singer, and in 1998 was on television in Buenos Aires for a month.

In 1999, Cristina was arrested in an insurance scam, accused of arson, after an anonymous denunciation by her Italian ex-boyfriend. Investigation uncovered other crimes and she was sentenced to three years in a men’s prison, 2003-6, where she was frequently attacked and raped, and was incommunicado to her family for many months. Her weight doubled from 60 to 122 kg, and she suffered obvious physical deterioration.

After release she appeared on television gossip shows, complaining about her treatment in prison. The Instituciones Penitenciarias denounced her statement as calumny, but later in 2006 the Socialist Workers Government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (no relation) introduced a new policy of respecting a prisoner's gender and changed name, and placing trans women in women's prisons.

She was confronted by other trans activists in that she gave a bad image to the trans community.   In 2010 she was challenged on television to lose the weight that she had gained in prison, and some months later had lost 35kg.  But she was still suffering from bulimia and depression. 

In 2013 Cristina presented her 23-year-old boyfriend.   However he disappeared with her savings of €60,000.   But she was hired as one of the stars of the show Que trabajo Rita. From the end of 2013 to 2014, La Veneno made stellar appearances in some of the concerts of the tour.

In October 2016 her long-promised memoirs, ¡Digo! ni puta ni santa, appeared.  It was co-written with Valeria Vegas, a friend, and self-published through the Bigcartel web site.  She gave the initials of many famous politicians and footballers who had had sex with her.    This resulted in death threats.

In November that year she was found at home with bruises, unconscious and with a serious bruise on her head.  She was rushed to hospital, put into an induced coma, and died a few days later.  She was 52.  Officially she was deemed to have suffered a fall after massive consumption of pills, but there are suspicions that one of the death threats was acted on. Her family attempted to re-open the case in 2017 to show that it was murder.

A plaque has been mounted in Cristina's Honour in Madrid's Parque del Oeste where she worked as a prostitute.

In 2019, Cristina's sister attempted to again re-open the case with the support of Dr Luis Frontela, a prestigious forensic doctor, who pointed out defence wounds on Cristina's hand.  However the attempt was without success.

*Not the  University professor.

• "Los buenos modales son Veneno". Perlas ensangrentadas. Online.
• "La Veneno pasa factura".  Interviu, 24/04/2006.  Online. 
• "La Veneno, su infierno en la cárcel" Entrevista en “Qué me dices”, 3 de abril de 2006. Archive. 
• "Prisiones denuncia a «La Veneno» por decir que sufrió abusos en la cárcel" ABC, 21 de abril de 2006. Online. 
• «La Veneno, perdida por los hombres de mal vivir». El Mundo. 12 de noviembre de 2016. Online. 
• CristinaOrtiz & Valeria Vegas. ¡Digo! ni puta ni santa: las memorias de la Veneno. Roi Porto DL, 2016.
• "La Veneno murió por una caída accidental".  El Periodico, 10/11/2018.  Online.
• " 'La Veneno' pudo ser asesinada, según un nuevo análisis forense".  La Opinion de Tenerife, 09.01.2019.  Online.

  ES.WIKIPEDIA    IMDB     

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

The ES.Wikipedia page on Adra does list Cristina among its citizens of note.

A black trans woman in 1960s New Jersey

A black trans girl, for whom we are not given a name, not even a doctor’s pseudonym, was in the New Jersey foster care system as her mother was disabled and indigent. As she entered her teens, she expressed the kinds of statement that trans girls usually do. For this she was committed to a psychiatric institution and labeled ‘schizophrenic’. For the next fifteen years, her gender identity issues were taken as evidence of ‘delusion’, ‘mental retardation’ and ‘sexual perversion’.

In 1978 Jeanne Hoff, who had taken over Harry Benjamin’s practice, and had recently completed her own transition, became aware of the case. The patient was now 30 years old. Hoff interviewed her, and petitioned for her release.

 “Through all the florid language of the [psychiatric] reports there is an unmistakable moralistic disapproval of her effeminacy and homosexuality but not the slightest hint that the diagnosis of transsexualism was suspected, even though it was quite evident from the details provided. . . . She should be placed in the community, preferably living by herself” and “she should be permitted to explore the various problems that arise from cross-gender living, hormonal therapy, and surgical gender reassignment.”

• Julian Gill-Peterson. Histories of the Trangender Child. University of Minnesota Press, 2018: 159-160, 248n105.

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

Gill-Peterson found this account in the Jeanne Hoff archives at the Kinsey Institute.   He discusses, of course, how maltreatment of this sort was more often inflicted on black people.   We have already seen Chris Thompson, a dancer, who was black, gay, trans and asthmatic. She sought treatment for asthma at New York’s Bellevue Hospital in 1970, but was locked in the psychiatric wing for not being heteronormative.  

Again we do not know what happened afterwards.   One hopes that the woman in New Jersey was discharged, but she would still have needed help after 15 years of incarceration.

William Seymour (184? - ?) cab driver

Seymour was raised with the name of Mary in Taunton, Somerset, with a father who was a land agent for the local nobleman.

At age 14 Seymour was married to an army surgeon, by the name of Honeywell. However the marriage was unbearable and Seymour ran away to London.

There Seymour met a woman who had previously been a farm servant on the estate in Taunton. She was married to a cabman, and with his example Seymour took a haircut and with a ‘judicious use of clothing’ was able to pass as a man, and make a living as a cab driver.

After three years, in 1869, Seymour relocated to Liverpool, where he continued in his trade. By this time he had a wife, Agnes, who would bring his dinner to the cabstand. They were recorded as married in the 1871 census.

In February 1875 Seymour was committed for trial for stealing 30lbs of meat from a butcher on Leece Street Liverpool. In the detective office suspicions were aroused in that Seymour was almost 30, and there was sign neither of a beard nor of the use of a razor. Seymour was persuaded to confess his original gender and was indicted under his male name, his girl name and his married name of Mrs Honeywell. He was found guilty and imprisoned for two months in Walton Jail.

• “A Woman as a Cabdriver for Ten Years’. The Liverpool Mercury, 13 February 1875. Reprinted in Alison Oram & Annmarie Turnbull. The Lesbian History Sourcebook: Love and Sex Between Women in Britain from 1780–1970. Routledge, 2001: 31-2.
• Billie-Gina Thomason. “William Seymour: The ‘Female Cabdriver”. Museum of Liverpool, January 2018. Online.

_____________

There is no information of what happened to Seymour after his release from jail.  Hopefully he was able to continue as a cab driver.  

Of course there are some cis men with no apparent beard.

This is a hansom cab from the 1870s. which is possibly what Seymour drove:

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

Karla Avelar (1978 - ) activist

Avelar was born  in Chalatenango Department, in the north of El Salvador, just before the Civil War,. From an early age, despite being dressed as a boy, she came across as a girl, and most in the neighbourhood called her Karla rather than Carlos.

By the age of 10 she had been raped twice by one cousin, and another would shoot at her, and said that he would kill her as there were only machos in the family. She left without money.

In the capital, San Salvador, she spent the first six months sleeping in the bus station or on the street, begging and finding whatever to eat in the trash. She was taken in by a woman who made her work hard at domestic chores. She was raped by the woman’s son. One of her chores was to buy tortillas, but the tortillería was in a neighbourhood run by the Mara Salvatrucha (MS 13) gang.They decided to gang rape her. After 15 men, she seized an opportunity and was able to escape.

Homeless again she met a trans woman, Diana, who showed her how to survive by sex work. The more established trans whores resented newcomers. They bullied her, they called her la machorra (the dyke) because of her short hair, and they stole her money, until she learned to fight back.

While the civil war raged, the capital was comparatively peaceful. Over 80,000 were killed in the country, the vast majority by the forces of the US-backed Junta. In 1992 the UN brought the two sides together and enforced peace accords. However criminal gangs such as MS-13, reinforced by members deported from the US, tightened control.

Many – including prostitutes – emigrated to the US if they could. The term transgeneros was not yet in use. One of the terms used for trans women was locas (literally: crazy women).

There was a serial killer in San Salvador who would drive by and shoot at trans women. He became named Matalocas. It was said that he had an artificial leg. One night in 1992, 14-year-old Karla was in a john’s car giving head when she realized that he had an artificial leg. He hit her with his gun, but she was able to grab the wheel and forced a crash. She grabbed his gun as she escaped the car and threw it away. However he had a second gun and shot her nine times.

She went into a long coma, but the hospital doctors saved her. They also informed her that she was HIV+. Officials could not find her next of kin while she was unconscious, so a television station broadcast her picture, and her grandmother came to sit with her in the hospital.

Karla was the first of Matalocas’ victims to survive and who could identity him. The police had retrieved the gun which was registered. Further the man, a high-ranking military official, went to reclaim his firearm. However he was never charged with anything.

Karla was approached by William Hernández who had just founded an LGBT rights group, Entre Amigos. Karla was willing to go public. She and Entre Amigos held a press conference and gave the real name of Matalocas. The only result was that they received death threats.

After recovery, Karla returned to sex work. She and Paty Hernández organized a trans-rights group, El Nombre de la Rosa. Those working as prostitutes gave a portion of their earnings – almost like a union. At first the government refused to register the group as a non-profit, saying that its aims were “contrary to morality”.

In 1996 Karla was working near the national monument, Monumento al Divino Salvador del Mundo, when three gay men taunted her and another trans woman. They removed their belts as if to whip her and she stabbed one of them as the other trans woman fled. She alone was arrested, and sent to the notorious Sensuntepeque prison where she was gang-raped on the first day.

While the prison had a Sector 2 for gay and trans prisoners, the gang inmates were free to come and go in Sector 2 as they pleased. They treated Karla and the others as personal slaves for housekeeping tasks and for sex. She was also tortured by the guards.

The first pride march was in 1997 – this was followed by a new wave of violence. Trans women were vanishing. Between the late 1990s and 2003, the number of adult trans women known to Entre Amigos and El Nombre de la Rosa dropped from around 200 to 40. Some emigrated (mainly to the US), some died of AIDS, other were murdered.

Karla was released in 2000, suffering from being HIV+, and having lost a lot of weight. Even so, she went back to sex work. In 2006 she started antiretroviral therapy, but was shot five times for refusing to pay ‘rent’ while working on gang turf. She survived the shooting and also being stabbed twice in the back by the same gang the next year.

Karla’s friend Diane was killed, also in 2007, by her lover, a police officer. El Nombre de la Rosa had evolved into ASPIDH-Arcoiris, but Karla was not welcome, having been too pushy before. She started a new group, COMCAVIS Trans. At first it was funded by sex workers' contributions, but Karla taught herself how to do paperwork to incorporate the organization, and how to do Excel accounting. It got a USAID grant in 2011.

In 2010 COMCAVIS filed a first complaint against Sensuntepeque prison, and then others in 2011 and 2014. They won the trans inmates the right to wear female clothing, and then a partition was put up to separate Section 2, the same year that gang members were removed to a separate prison. Then condoms were made available. Karla visits the prison regularly to speak up for the trans inmates.

Tania Vásquez, a trans activist was murdered in 2013, and no one was ever arrested. Karla filed a complaint. The Attorney’s General Office responded with the threat to arrest Karla, a search warrant and a confiscation of the technical equipment of COMCAVIS TRANS.

However that year, Karla became the first trans woman to appear before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and to denounce the State of El Salvador for discrimination and hate crimes. Paty Hernández, emigrated in 2014 after 20 years of activism. In 2015, Karla participated in the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, which submitted an alternative report, which resulted in the first UN recommendation to the state of El Salvador on LGBTI matters.

Karla frequently travels abroad to speak for trans rights to international bodies. Now about to turn 40, she is one of only a few trans women in El Salvador over 35. She is constantly receiving death threats, and has had to move seven times in the last two years. In 2017 she was announced as a finalist for the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders, quickly followed by extortion attempts to seize whatever prize money she might get.

• J Lester feder & Nicola Chávez Courtright. “Meet The Trans Sex Worker Who Transformed A Gang-Controlled Prison”. BuzzFeed, February 08, 2015. www.buzzfeed.com/lesterfeder/meet-the-trans-sex-worker-who-transformed-an-el-salvadoran-p.
• Brian Dooley. “Karla Avelar's Life Of Constant Threats”. Huffpost, 05/13/2017. www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/karla-avelars-life-of-constant-threats_us_591783b9e4b02d6199b2effe.
• “Karla Avelar, 2017 Finalist”. Martin Ennals Award. www.martinennalsaward.org/hrd/karla-avelar.

________________

In a country where soldiers and death squads working for the junta killed 70,000 people, where serial killers go free, criminal gangs have impunity and young women are regularly raped on the street, an organization to protect trans women is refused registration on the grounds that it is  “contrary to morality”.

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 to taking care of transgender prisoners.

• 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.

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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.
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• 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.

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