Monday, April 20, 2009

Citizen B's Sad News: The Murder of Angela Zapata

I didn't feel it was appropriate to put the label "favorite news" on this article, because this story is so tragic and gruesome.

July 17, 2008 a transgender woman named Angela Zapata was found murdered in Greeley, CO. Coroners revealed she had been bludgeoned to death, causing multiple skull fractures.

The investigation indicated that she had been killed by a man named Allen Andrade, whom the 18-year-old Angela had met over the internet. The two met on a dating website, and exchanged some 700 text messages before Andrade spent 36 hours in Zapata's apartment with her. In Andrade's confession he says that he told his girlfriend that he killed Zapata when he found out she had been born a man. He says he just "snapped" upon realizing he had oral sex with another man.

A judge recently threw out a portion of Andrade's confession where he stated that he feared members of his gang would kill him if he was involved in any homosexual sex. However, Andrade is not only facing a murder charge, but a hate crime charge as well after telling his girlfriend "all gay things need to die." He defended his actions further telling his girlfriend "It's not like I went up to a school teacher and shot her in the head . . . or I killed a straight, law-abiding citizen."

After the murder, Andrade ransacked the apartment and gave Zapata's purses to his girlfriend as gifts.

Zapata's family says Angela never hid her transgender status, casting doubt on Andrade's sudden murderous rage. In testimony today, Andrade's girlfriend Angie Tyree stated that Andrade was driving Zapata's car after the murder, and that he had expressed suicidal thoughts.


This is the second transgender murder to make headlines in my lifetime. You might remember when Brandon Teena, a female-to-male transgender was murdered in rural Nebraska. He was first assaulted and then raped by his killers John Lotter and Tom Nissen. His killers were both convicted felons who said she got what she deserved for living as a man. The police had not held the boys after the rape was reported; some believe that if they had Brandon would be alive today.

The murder of Angela Zapata is just as gruesome. I will keep following the trial. While it may appear from reading the article that Andrade will obviously be found guilty on both counts, the legal system is slippery. I hope that since justice was found for Brandon Teena's murder (John Lotter received the death penalty and Tom Nissen a life-prison sentence), justice can be found for Angela as well.

What confused me, apart from Andrade's open bigotry and indifference to his crime, is that during Angie Tyree's testimony she said she still loved Andrade. Could you still love someone after he admitted committing such a gruesome murder to you? And still love him upon learning that the reason for the murder was he was having sexual relations with someone else? Learning that the purses belonged to the victim, how could she have kept them?

Moreover, how do you defend a criminal like this, someone who doesn't believe his victim was a human being? Over the last several months there has been controversy as to the rights of gays and lesbians, specifically the right to marry. Moreover, I have heard many here in Colorado say that "hate crimes" should not be considered an added offense to assault, rape, or murder. I strongly disagree. Harming another person because of a prejudice is equivalent to a premeditated assault. Such a strong prejudice indicates to me that you have planned already what you would do to someone of a certain race, gender, sexual orientation, or religion. In this case, Ardarde has no other motive for murder other than his hatred. I hope that the jury sees the statement "all gay things need to die" as a mass death threat to the entire LGBT community, and punishes him accordingly.

2 comments:

  1. People like that make me sick. That kind of speech just reeks of KKK and other neo-nazi groups. They're the same arguments that people give for subjugating women even now. I think it shows how little attention is paid to history in school here in the US that so many people are unable to see its repetitions and the repercussions that come of not learning from mistakes. I just don't get it. I will never understand how someone can hate or kill someone else just because they're different from them.

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  2. And I also cannot understand a girl who stays with a guy who's BLATANTLY cheating on her. But that's another topic completely.

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