Posted on 07/20/2010 1:27:32 PM PDT by TexasCajun
The family of a Wharton firefighter who died battling a massive egg farm blaze is fighting to keep his widow from receiving death benefits, arguing that the 37-year-old had found out his bride of two years was born a man.
Thomas Araguz III separated from his wife after learning her history two months prior to being trapped in the fatal July 3 fire, according to attorney Chad Ellis, who is representing Araguz's parents in the lawsuit.
"He was distraught. It was extremely difficult and embarrassing for Tommy," said Ellis, who added that there is no will for the estate, which will be substantial since the fire captain died in the line of duty.
(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
Move to Folsom Street!
“What do you do when you’re branded, but you know you’re a man?”
Go shopping? Open a Country Living Magazine? Run for mayor? The list seems endless.
Get your own reality show.
Araguz’s mother, who is working with his first wife in this matter, wants all of his benefits to go to his sons.
Ellis said he will challenge the validity of the couple’s marriage in probate court as a means to redirect any benefits that may have gone to Nikki Araguz to her husband’s 7- and 10-year-old sons from his previous marriage.
Video at link...
http://abcnews.go.com/US/transgender-widow-lose-husbands-benefits-suit-gender/story?id=11199690
“If you were born a man and have sexual reassignment surgery, you remain legally a man,” Ellis said of the 1999 court ruling. “You have the chromosomes of a male. You don’t have a uterus.”
Ellis, who said Araguz’s mother has asked him to speak on her behalf as they grieve for their son, said Araguz learned of his wife’s transgender status only after she gave a deposition on April 28 as part of a family court matter between Araguz and his first wife regarding their children.
“She said she never told him that she was born Justin Graham Purdue,” he said.
“That’s literally the moment he found out,” Ellis said. “They separated within a week.”
A search of public records under the names Nikki Araguz and Justin Graham Purdue turned up several criminal convictions for offenses includnig driving while intoxicted and issuing bad checks.
According to the lawsuit, Nikki Araguz’s name was legally changed in 1996. The lawsuit also notes that in petitioning the court for the name change, Justin Purdue filed a statement that he was “a woman with male anatomy working toward a sex change.”
A longtime friend of Nikki Araguz, who declined to be identifiied, told ABCNews.com that her status as a transgender woman was known to her friends and family.
“I’ve known since she was 18,” the friend said, calling the lawsuit’s claims that Thomas Araguz only recently found out “not accurate.”
WHAT THE HELL IS THAT !!!????
The firefighter getting his freak on?
Not so uncommon in Texas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Gale
Jennifer Lauren Gale (1960 - December 17, 2008) was an American transgender perennial political candidate in Texas. Gale was a native of Wisconsin and a Democrat.
Gale’s first run for elective office came during her bid for Austin mayor in 1997.
In 2004, Gale was challenged by fellow mayoral candidate and popular local vagrant crossdresser Leslie Cochran to a debate at the University of Texas student union on the topic of who would best represent the homeless. Gale declined to participate unless given $50 worth of food from the Wendy’s restaurant inside the union. “Dunlavy”, the event organizer, declined...
“Unknown to (Thomas Araguz), Nikki Paige Purdue was born Justin Graham Purdue, a male, in Monterey County, Calif.,” the suit claims. It includes a copy of what is purported to be his/her birth certificate listing the June 4, 1975 birth of a boy in Carmel, Calif. to Sheri Lynn Taylor, 20, of Bryan, Texas and Christin Wayne Purdue, 20, who was serving in the U.S. Army.
The suit says Nikki Araguz legally changed her name Feb. 9, 1996 from Justin Graham Purdue to Nikki Paige Purdue.
The suit includes a copy of the name-change request with the statement, “I, Justin Purdue, am a woman with male anatomy, working toward a sex change. I have been living and working as a woman for over one year and seek to make my new name legal and permanent” included in the filing.
A document on file at the Harris County district clerk’s office confirms that a Justin Graham Purdue born June 4, 1975 did change his name to Nikki Paige Purdue. Whether Nikki Araguz is that Nikki Paige Purdue will have to be determined by the court.
Before The Suit
Following the 1996 name change, Nikki Paige Purdue became Nikki Paige Purdue-Mata, but divorced in October 2007 and dropped Mata.
Thomas Araguz divorced Heather Delgado July 3, 2008.
On Aug. 23, 2008, Nikki and Thomas married in Needville.
While married to Thomas, Nikki Araguz began publishing the now-defunct free-distribution magazine Wharton County Living. She entered local politics this year seeking the mayor’s post in the city of Wharton, but in May was defeated 382-118 by city councilman Domingo Montalvo Jr., a retired Wharton volunteer firefighter.
On April 13, 2010, Heather Delgado filed an emergency petition in her divorce claiming Nikki Araguz made appointments with medical and school officials for her children without consent, prevented communication between her and her children and drank at inappropriate times.
On May 14, an agreement was reached giving Delgado medical and educational oversight of her children and ordering she be given telephone access. It prohibits posting of the childrens’ pictures on social networking sites.
The order includes a permanent injunction for Thomas Araguz to “do all that he is able to do to not allow Nikki Purdue Araguz to contact Heather Delgado in a harassing manner.”
Four days later, Heather Delgado requested a protective order against Nikki Araguz, claiming she had been threatened and harassed.
On May 28, that case was dismissed.
Thirty-six days later on July 3, Thomas Araguz, an 11-year veteran of the Wharton Volunteer Fire Department, died after entering the burning warehouse of Maxim Egg’s production facility just outside of Boling. His body was found in the building the next morning.
Funeral services for Araguz were held Sunday, July 11.
The suit seeking to void his marriage to Nikki Araguz was filed the next afternoon.
If he hadn't died in the fire, he might have died of embarrassment?
...even though many would have been fooled by his looks along.
We make fun, but it's a very tragic ordeal for the family and kids.
Not so uncommon in Texas.
http://www.houstonpress.com/1995-03-16/news/party-of-insiders/
Party of Insiders
Comments (0) By Jim Simmon Thursday, Mar 16 1995
Mincberg, a real-estate developer who was elected party chair last year over Leslie Perez, Houston’s favorite killer transsexual, explained via phone that he’s hoping some individuals and corporations “will be so moved” by his appeal that they’ll urp up the ten grand. “They may or may not be middle-class Americans,” he adds.
http://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-Games-Convicted-Murderer-Changed/dp/1559721804
Dangerous Games: The True Story of a Convicted Murderer on Death Row Who Changed His Sex and Won Her Freedom [Hardcover]
Robert L. Bentley
Robert L. Bentley (Author)
› Visit Amazon’s Robert L. Bentley Page
Find all the books, read about the author, and more.
See search results for this author
Are you an author? Learn about Author Central
(Author)
“In this unusual story, engagingly told by screenwriter Bentley, Leslie Douglas Ashley met Carolyn Lima at a lesbian bar in Houston. In February 1961, soon after moving in together, the pair, who had turned to prostitution, were charged with fatally shooting a customer named Fred A. Tones, leaving his burned body in a vacant lot. A legal battle and media circus ensued. Ashley was sentenced to death; Lima was imprisoned and eventually released. Ashley’s verdict was overturned because the prosecutor improperly hid psychiatric records. Ashley was sent to a mental hospital, escaped and was captured six months later. After serving five years in prison, he was released and underwent a sex-change operation, becoming Leslie Elaine Perez. In a stranger than fiction twist, she became politically active in Houston’s chapter of ACT-UP.”
“Hey, folks, she probably went to court to legally change her gender to female”
Can you do that?
I mean, absent being a natural hermaphrodite.
Wharton County Living Magazine
Thank you to all of my loyal and wonderful friends and clients. I appreciate you greatly, however, due to the sudden death of my beloved husband Thomas Araguz III, I will no longer be publishing the magazine. I am too devestated to do anything, much less publishing a magazine on my own—He was my partner. I love you Honey!!! Be in peace my love.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Wharton-County-Living-Magazine/120330531695
ditto
Nikki Araguz, 30, widow of Wharton volunteer firefighter Thomas Araguz III, 30, talks about the effects his death has had on her and her family.
This is actual grounds for anulment.
It is the fraud and deception portion.
My guess here folks, but he/she loses the life insurance payout to the kids but gains a reality TV show. How’s “Nikki’s World” sound?
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