Frank Spisak (1951 - 2011) factory worker, serial killer, inmate.

Frank was the son of a factory worker in Cleveland, Ohio, who moved home because too many blacks had moved into the area. He had childhood fantasies of being a woman.  He married at 22, and they had one daughter. He read constantly on Hitler and the Nazis and his wife tried to ignore the issue. He worked in various factory jobs.

At 25 he suffered a head injury in a car accident. In 1977, he started dressing as female. As Frankie Ann, Spisak received treatment from the Gender Dysphoria clinic at Cleveland Metropolitan Hospital, lived as female full-time, changed her ID, saw a psychologist and started taking female hormones. She was also saving for surgery. She was fired from her factory job after turning up as female. Frankie Ann found employment with a maker of eyeglasses until found not to be a woman. She tried prostitution until charged with solicitation, and briefly worked as a Kelly Girl temp. When she brought a trans woman home for sex, her wife and daughter moved out.

But in 1979 the Nazi Frank took over. He collected Nazi memorablia, and played Hitler’s speeches on his stereo. He was stockpiling guns and ammunition. He was also dating a black female prostitute. In February 1982 he found a black preacher in the next stall in the men’s toilet at the Cleveland State University Library and shot him dead. In June he shot a black man at a train station, who survived. In August he returned to to CSU and shot at a female student in the ladies room but missed. He became paranoid about a maintenance worker at CSU who might identify him, and so shot him dead, again in the men’s toilets. The next night he killed a young man waiting at a bus stop.

A week later he got drunk and shot his gun out of the window of his house. For this he was arrested, but was allowed to post bond. An anonymous phone call suggested to the police that they re-examine the guns that they had taken from Spisak’s house, and they were found to match those used in the killings.

Once arrested he admitted the murders, grew a Hitler-style mustache and carried a copy of Mein Kampf. At his 1983 trial, his attorney presented him as crazy but he was not found to be ‘legally insane’. He declared that he was under orders from God, and that Jews were to blame for his transvestite episodes, having seized control of his mind. The jury quickly found him guilty and sentenced him to death.

In jail, Spisak lobbied for a sex change, filed a lawsuit to force the state to refer to him as a woman, and appealed the death sentence. In 2006 the appeal court ruled that he had not received a fair defense and struck down his death sentence. In 2010, this was reversed.

He was executed 17 February 2011. He had been 27 years on death row.

• “Brief of Respondent for Smith v Spisak, 08-724”. www.abanet.org/publiced/preview/briefs/pdfs/07-08/08-724_Respondent.pdf.
• “Frank Spisak”. Serial Killer Central. Oct 11 2004. www.skcentral.com/articles.php?article_id=131.
• Jared Klaus. “Cheating Death: A cross-dressing Nazi murdered a prosecutor's dad 25 years ago. He's back”. Cleveland Scene. Dec 06, 2006. http://www.clevescene.com/cleveland/cheating-death/Content?oid=1497024.

Phynix (1944 - ) musician.

Beverly Glenn-Copeland was born in Philadelphia. She trained as a musician at McGill University and the New York Metropolitan.

Pre-transition she had a wife, but lost her to a man, who could give her children. Phynix transitioned to male in 2002.

Post-transition he has another wife and is step-father to her two sons.

He works in classical, rock and jazz as a pianist and singer. He also does music for children’s television: Sesame Street, Mr Dress-up, and he did the music for the 1974 film Montréal Main.

He is a Buddhist and lives in Ontario.

• Judith Merril.  “You Can Be Anything You Want - An Interview with Beverly Glenn-Copeland”.  no date http://pi.library.yorku.ca/ojs/index.php/cws/article/viewFile/14556/13608
• Sarah Hamson. “The Singer formerly seen as she”. The Globe and Mail. 14 May 2005.
• Phynix. Phynix. www.songcycles.com/New%20Adult%20Frameset.html.

Albert F. (188? - ?) printer.

Originally from the north of England, she had been wife to a man for several years, but the marriage broke up when both their children died. She then became sexually involved with a woman.

Partly from fear that her husband would turn up, she moved to North London, became Albert and got a job as a printer. Albert did well in the job and was earning 'very high wages even for a man'.

After war started in 1914, five of his co-workers volunteered for the forces. By 1916 Albert was called up. His employer appealed that he was indispensable.

However he was required to appear before the recruitment medical examining board. He requested permission for a private medical examination because of a cardiac condition. This was refused and the examination soon revealed his biological sex.

The story got into the newspapers, and Albert despite his employer's objections was barred from the printing profession. He left London and went to live with relatives in the north.

• “Woman’s Attempt to Join the Army”. Hornsey Journal. Aug 18, 1917.
• Julie Wheelwright. Amazons and Military Maids: Women who dressed as men in pursuit of life, liberty and happiness. Pandora 1989: 44-6

The virgin of Rapsha

The tradition of Sworn Virgins, found in northern Shqiperia (Albania), Crna Gora (Montenegro) and Kosova, wherein born-female persons avoid marriage and adopt male dress, was a long time as a legend in the West, reported at best in brief anecdotes, almost as if the subject were part of crypto-biology.

One of the earliest reports was by Edith Durham, who at the beginning of chapter IV of her book reports of an incident in 1908:

We left early next morning for Seltze-Kilmeni, piloted by the old man, and followed a stony track to Rapsha whose people derive from Laj Gheg, son of Gheg Laz.

Here we found one of the Albanian virgins who wear male attire. While we halted to water the horses she came up—a lean, wiry, active woman of forty-seven, clad in very ragged garments, breeches and coat. She was highly amused at being photographed, and the men chaffed her about her " beauty." Had dressed as a boy she said, ever since she was quite a child because she had wanted to, and her father had let her. Of matrimony she was very derisive—all her sisters were married, but she had known better. Her brother, with whom she lived—a delicate-looking fellow, much younger than she —came up to see what was happening. She treated me with the contempt she appeared to think all petticoats deserved—turned her back on me, and exchanged cigar­ettes with the men, with whom she was hail-fellow-well-met. In a land where each man wears a moustache, her little, hairless, wizened face looked very odd above masculine garb, as did also the fact that she was unarmed.

• Edith Durham. High Albania. London: E. Arnold, 1909. Reprinted:Virago travellers. London: Virago, 1985: 80.

Jacquie Grant (1943 - ) merchant sailor, nightclub owner, councillor, foster mother, museum owner, business woman.

Grant was born in Gippsland, and raised in a children’s home in Melbourne. In 1964 Grant fled to New Zealand to avoid imprisonment for dressing as female: New Zealand being the one place that Australians could go without a passport.

After being in the merchant navy for several years, and then being a restaurant/ nightclub owner, in 1970 Grant transitioned and became Jacquie. She married, and with her Maori husband adopted and fostered over 70 children for the Dept of Welfare.

For 15 years she managed the Moana Zoo and Wildlife park at Lake Brunner.

She served for two terms on the Greymouth District Council.

She has collected circular sock machines for over 30 years, she owns about 200 and owns a manufacturing business that makes them, and also a museum.

She also runs a motor camp at Hokitika.

Her husband died in 1992.

She was awarded the New Zealand Order of Merit in 1998 for her fostering services. She has been a sitting member of the NZ Human Rights Review Tribunal since 2004. In 2007 she sat as a member of the local High Court bench.

• “ ‘Tranny Granny’ Jacquie Grant”. GayNZ. 16 Nov 2004. www.gaynz.com/articles/publish/34/article_482.php.
• “ ‘'Tranny Granny' stays on human rights panel”. GayNZ. 7 Nov 2009. www.gaynz.com/articles/publish/2/article_8126.php.
• “Jacquie Grant”. Matt & Andrej Koymasky. http://andrejkoymasky.com/liv/fam/biog3/grant05.html.
• “Jacquie Grant”. Jacquie Grant's New Zealand Auto Knitter. www.autoknitter.com/JGVSKMM/About.htm.

____________________________________________________________

Jacquie is the first transsexual NZ Order of Merit, Human Rights Review member, zoo manager  and the first to foster over 70 children. 

What a role model. 

She is not the first transgender museum keeper – that would be Charlotte von Mahlsdorf.

Maxwell Anderson (1956 – 2010) tax accountant, psychologist.

After spending early adulthood in Chicago, Maxwell began transition to male in the mid 1980s.

He moved to Florida in 1990 where he ran the transgender support group, The Eden Society.

In 1996 he moved to  the Atlanta area. He worked as a lecturer and was a certified tax expert. He was a friend of Robert Eads, and in 2000 he co-chaired the 10^th Southern Comfort convention. Maxwell and Robert are in the associated documentary Southern Comfort.

He later married his girlfriend and did a PhD in Psychology and had a practice specializing in GLBT issues. He was also a certified Grief Counselor. He was working on a second documentary, Southern Comforted.

He died of brain cancer at the age of 53.

*Not the playwright.

• Simon-Astley Scholfield. “Maxwell Anderson’s Astrology Chart”. Astroqueer. 2000. http://astroqueer.tripod.com/charts/max.html.
• Kate Davis (dir). Southern Comfort. With Robert Eads, Maxwell Anderson and others. US 90 mins 2001. Grand Jury Prize for documentary feature at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival.
• Viki Rene. “Interview with a Superstar!: Maxwell Anderson”. Feb 15, 2004. www.vickirene.net/intmax.htm.
• Maxwell Anderson. Myspace. www.myspace.com/maxwellanderson.
• www.drmaxwellanderson.com.

Flo McGarrell (1973 – 2010) sculptor.

McGarrell was born in Rome to US expatriate parents and lived there until the age of 8. They lived in St Louis before moving to Vermont in 1993.

McGarrell did bachelor’s and master’s degrees in new arts and fibres at Maryland Institute College of Art, and a master’s in arts and technology from the School of the Art Institute in Chicago in 2004.

He transitioned to male in 2003.

He was known for large scale inflatable sculptures that could envelop people, and was experimenting with plants and recycled materials. He was art director for the film Maggots and Men, about the 1921 uprising in Kronstadt in the USSR. He had a studio in Vermont and another in Haiti.

He died in the January 2010 earthquake.

• Georgia Kotretsos. “Inside the Artist’s Studio: Flo McGarrell”. Art:21. Aug 28^th, 2009. http://blog.art21.org/2009/08/28/inside-the-artists-studio-flo-mcgarrell.
• Gregory Trotter. “Area Artist Dies in Haiti quake”. Rutland Herald. Jan 15, 2010. www.rutlandherald.com/article/20100115/THISJUSTIN/1150333.
• Cary Crowenwett (dir). Maggots and Men. Art direction by Flo McGarrell. US 53 mins 2009.