Unfinished Lives

Gay Murder/Dismemberment Trial Gets Underway Today in North Texas

Richard Hernandez, victim, and Seth Winder, the accused (l to r; Dallas Voice image)

Dallas, Texas – After three years of delays and postponements, the trial of the accused murderer of openly gay Richard Hernandez begins today.  The Dallas Voice, doing great journalistic work on this difficult case, announced the story on November 10, quoting first assistant Denton County district attorney Jamie Beck on the trial delays, “Everybody wants a swifter and quicker justice, but you’ve got to do it right. Bottom line, we want justice, so if that means it takes a while, then so be it.”

The “Silence of the Lambs” style murder of 38-year-old Hernandez, an employee of Walmart, drew national press attention in September 2008 when the victim’s viscera but no body was discovered in an apartment in far North Dallas.  When Hernandez, a conscientious employee, did not report for work, his friends prevailed on the apartment superintendent to open his residence, and what they found resembled a slaughterhouse.  Copious amounts of blood spattered the walls.  Hernandez’s body was never found, but tissue from it was left, dumped in the bathtub.  Dallas Police acted quickly to track down the killer. True Crime reported that the DPD filed capital murder charges against Seth Winder, 29, a homeless man with a history of erratic behavior and mental illness, even though they did not have possession of a body in the case–only the third time in thirty years of police department history.

Winder was located because of credit card charges he made to Hernandez’s stolen cards after the murder date.  Police apprehended Winder in a tent inThe Colony, where he was in possession of personal items of the victim and a bloody sword that may have been used in the dismemberment.  The Dallas Voice reports the police conclusion that the killer disposed of the body in a trash dumpster which was emptied in a landfill, making Hernandez’s remains unrecoverable.

Winder’s competence to stand trial was hotly contested in the earlier days of the case.  His father and stepmother told the press that their son was a schizophrenic who had once tried to strangle his own mother.  Friends of Hernandez contended that Winder was just clever enough to play ill in order to avoid responsibility for the grisly murder.  The whole stew was made nastier by the report of police investigators that they discovered a digital camera belonging to Hernandez with “pornographic images” of Winder. The victim’s friends and family vigorously denied the implication that Hernandez and Winder were in a sexual relationship. In the end, Winder was ruled incompetent to stand trial.

Hernandez’s mother will not be there today to see if justice will be done for her son.  She died with the story unresolved, thanks in part to a strategy of delays put in place by Winder’s legal defense team, and to the untimely publication of a book on the murder authored by Winder’s own stepmother.

Now, after years of treatment, authorities say Seth Winder is able to face his day in court.  Jury selection has begun, and barring other delays, three years of agonized waiting are about to conclude for Richard Hernandez’s friends and remaining family.

November 14, 2011 - Posted by unfinishedlives | Anglo Americans, anti-LGBT hate crime murder, capital punishment, Decapitation and dismemberment, Evisceration, gay men, GLBTQ, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, Latino and Latina Americans, Law and Order, LGBTQ, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, Texas | Anglo Americans, anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Decapitation and dismemberment, Evisceration, gay men, GLBTQ, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, Latino / Latina Americans, Law and Order, LGBTQ, perpetrators, Texas