Gwen Araujo
Posted on 07/26/2005 4:30:27 PM PDT by SmithL
Hayward -- One of three men accused of killing a 17-year-old Newark transgender nearly three years ago testified today that he participated in the attack after learning that Gwen Araujo was not the woman he thought he'd had sex with.
Testifying for the first time at his retrial on murder charges, Jose Merel, 25, said he was disgusted when friends at a party revealed that Araujo, who called herself Lida and with whom Merel had previously had anal sex, was biologically male.
"It's hard to explain," Merel said in a Hayward courtroom of the way he felt on Oct. 3, 2003. "Your whole life you think you're a heterosexual. Then you get pleasure from a homosexual. It disgusted me."
Merel did not testify at the first trial, which ended in June 2004 with the jury deadlocked on charges against him and two other men, Michael Magidson and Jason Cazares, both 25. The case, and the mistrial, outraged the transgender community.
The retrial began last month.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
you don't know what you are talking about.
El Dorado County is at least a 2-3 drive from where the murder occurred. The murder also occurred, not the night of the sexual encounters, but some several days afterwards.
Sounds pre-meditated to me!
:-)
What's odd about this article? Is it that there was no mention that this guy had already had sex with men without telling them that she was a he. Only that someone discovered that he was a she and then they beat him up and killed him. This is a big gay activist thing now.
Not that this guy deserved to be killed, but I like how they conveniently leave out the bad crap the guy playing dress up did.
Hmmm the Wikipedia also lists
"Milton Berle, comic who had a standard routine of dressing as a woman."
In their list of transgendered people, go to the bottom for link.
Uncle Milty (or was he really an aunt) who would have thought!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_transgendered_people
Gwen Araujo
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Gwen Amber Rose Araujo (February 24, 1985 — October 4, 2002) was a teenager who was killed at a party by a group of transphobic men angered by the discovery that she was a transwoman.
Life
Gwen lived in Newark, California, USA. Family members knew Gwen as a happy and energetic child who was always laughing and quite active. Gwen, who had originally been given the name Edward, expressed the desire to be female from an early age and just prior to her death she was experimenting with cross living. Gwen Araujo attended public school and a local church with family members until the controversy surrounding her lifestyle grew, at which time she began to withdraw socially. She stopped attending Newark Memorial High School prior to her graduation and began to look for work. She was unable to find a job which her mother believed was the result of intolerance created by her child's gradual transition between the sexes.
[edit]
Death
Gwen, who was going by the name "Lida" at the time, was introduced to a circle of friends whom she met during a chance encounter while walking down a local street. The group of young adults enjoyed passing the evening hours with party activities that included playing dominos and consuming drugs and alcohol at the home of Gwen's to-be assailants. Gwen was reported to have engaged in sexual activities with several of the men from the group. She was later invited back to the house where a party was planned a few weeks after she and the men had first met. She wore her mother's peasant blouse to the party. Gwen's mother had asked her not to wear the clothing she had picked out for that evening and expressed her discomfort with Gwen's appearance. Gwen told her mother that she was just being jealous of her. This was the last time Sylvia Guerrero would see her child alive.
At the party on (October 3, 2002) it was discovered, by forced inspection (conducted by one of her assailants and his girlfriend), that Gwen was in fact a pre-operative transsexual woman. As rumors circulated, the men that she had sexual relations with became extremely agitated. The men, who had already begun to question Gwen's sex the previous week, revisited the idea of killing her. Once it was discovered that Gwen Araujo was biologically male, she was struck on the head with a soup can and then struck again with a frying pan causing a gash to her head. The blow was so forceful that her head broke a hole through an adjacent wall. Gwen was then taken to the garage of the home, where she was strangled by rope and severely beaten again with a shovel. She was then hog-tied, wrapped in a blanket and placed in the bed of a pick-up truck. Two of the men drove her body to parkland in El Dorado County, California, a wooded area in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, where she was finally buried in a shallow grave.
[edit]
Trial
Nearly two weeks passed before Gwen's body was discovered by the authorities. Partygoers present, for fear of reprisal, did not report the crime that had occurred and the assailants all agreed not to say a word to anyone about the matter. Later however, one of these men began talking to a friend and then wrote about his experience to his girlfriend from the jail where he was being held.
Alameda County Sheriff’s Department dispatched four crime scene investigators and two detectives who recovered the body at the gravesite. The deputies were led there on 16 October 2002 by Jaron Nabors, the youngest of the four individuals charged with her murder and hate crime. The four accused of the murder are: Michael Magidson, 27, Jaron Nabors, 19, Jose Merel, 24 and Jason Cazares, 23. Jaron Nabors later testified against the other three in a deal with the DA for a lesser charge of manslaughter after police monitored a jailhouse letter and information gained during a conversation with one of the accused using a wiretap.
In their trial, the men did not contest that they had killed her, but used a variant of the gay panic defence and claimed that it was not unreasonable, pleading for manslaughter rather than murder. The jury however, deadlocked, and a mistrial recorded. The jury appears to have rejected this defence, but was unable to decide whether the murders were premeditated, and so whether to convict them of first degree murder or second degree murder. Prosectors have announced they plan to go for first degree murder again at the retrial.
For an update on the retrial, currently scheduled for 9 May 2005, check out [1]
Remembrance
Gwen's mother, who referred to her child as her little "Angel", has said publicly that she would like her daughter's case to be influential in changing the disciplinary actions for hate crimes resulting in death to include the death penalty. Sylvia Guerrero and her brother David Guerrero have appeared publicly and before national media to express their grief and to denounce violence against youth faced with sexual identity conflicts.
Those who knew Gwen were joined by hundreds of sympathizers for her funeral located at St. Edward's Catholic Church in Newark. Following the ceremonies, there was a march through main streets leading to the community's mall attended by community dignitaries and leaders. Gwen was remembered again during the "Remembering Our Dead" vigils that took place in several major cities to commemorate the deaths of 27 transgendered people during the 12 month period that contained Gwen Araujo's own death.
Gwen was granted a posthumous name change on June 23, 2004.
October 19, 2002
Photo courtesy of sfgate.com
In Memory of Gwen Araujo
Gwen Araujo dreamed of becoming a Hollywood make up artist. She has been described as a beautiful person both inside and out and always smiling. She always thought of herself as a girl, preferred the name Gwen, and always wanted a sex change. She lived in Newark, CA, a small town 30 miles from San Francisco, the supposed gay capital of the United States.
At age 14, Gwen had the courage to come out to her parents. She grew out her hair and wore crop tops and women's jeans. Finally, at age 17, she borrowed her friend's miniskirt and her mom's blouse and had the courage to go out in a skirt as herself for the first time.
"[S]he went through a lot of pain, and people didn't respect h[er], her mother, Sylvia Guerrero, said. "It took a lot of guts. [S]he's strong, and [s]he finally came out."
Gwen went to a house party introduced as "Lida," and passed as a beautiful girl. That is until Paul Merel's girlfriend discovered in the bathroom that she was transsexual, and announced it at the party. Authorities say that Michael William Magidson, 22, Jose Antonio Merel, 22, and Jaron Chase Nabors, 19, punched Gwen in the face, beat her, gashing her face, and then dragged her to a garage while she was semi-conscious and strangled her with rope until she was killed. The men then allegedly tied her wrists and ankles, wrapped her in a bedsheet, and drove her body to Silver Fork Campground, about 100 miles away in El Dorado County.
Paul Richard Merel Jr., 25, Paul Merel's brother, was also arrested with the others, but released Friday. Magidson, Paul Merel, and Nabors are charged with murder and also face a hate-crime enhancement.
www.transyouth.net
"Does the fact that this person is transgendered justify MURDER? "
No but apparently teens throwing eggs at an armed man justifies murder according to the vigilante vultures in the egg throwing in another thread. I think the man in this story knew exactly what he was doing and is more disgusted that his sexual penchant was discovered and made public in court.
is this a Darwin Award candidate?
He was only disgusted after the fact.
Happilly, I missed the egg-throwing thread.
Deception in sex is NEVER good.
Neither is killing someone because you were drunk, stupid and got "had".
"So what? No reason to kill someone over..."
Hey, what no input for this other thread? (smirk)
Police: Egg-Throwing Boy Killed
The Indy Channel ^ | July 25, 2005 | A.P.
Posted on 07/25/2005 11:19:03 AM CDT by Abathar
What ever If I were on a jury I would turn the killer loose.
Bottom line -- they killed Gwen to be more "manly". They should be executed. I can understand a few punches (to ease their pathetic machismo) but strangling, hog-tieing, wrapped in a sheet and driven over 100 miles?
They would not have done this on a one-to-one basis, believe me, they did it purely for image.
Judge Roy wrote:
What ever If I were on a jury I would turn the killer loose.
>>>Hey, what no input for this other thread? (smirk)
Oh, I remember you. You are one of the ones that thought it was just a harmless little prank to throw an egg on the face of someone driving down the road at night.
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