Unfinished Lives

Remembering LGBT Hate Crime Victims

Neo-Nazi’s Trial Begins for Murdering Boy He Thought Was Gay

Kristofer King, murdered at 17

New Port Richey, FL – John Allen Ditulio, Jr., 23, is on trial in Pasco County Florida for the 2006 stabbing murder of a 17-year-old boy he thought was gay.  Kristofer King, the victim, was a houseguest of Patricia Wells and her son, Brandon Wininger, on the night of March 23, 2006 when Ditulio, a member of the American Nazis, allegedly invaded the Wells home angered by her relationship with an African American man and by the fact that her son was gay.  At midnight, according to Crime News 2000, a man wearing a military-style gas mask broke into the Griffin Park area trailer and attacked Wells, who was dozing on a futon.  The assailant slashed Wells in the face and hands, and then turned his murderous attentions to King, who had been on a computer in another room, and tried to escape from the home.  He stabbed King repeatedly, and then fled the scene.  Patricia Wells remembered that the boy cried out in the midst of the attack, “Why are you doing this to me?”  King died from blood loss the next day at an area hospital.  Charlene King, the victim’s mother, believes that her son’s murder was a case of mistaken identity.  She told the St. Petersburg Times that the attacker must have thought Kristofer King was Wininger, whom the Neo-Nazi hated because he was gay.  “What makes it so awful for being killed by someone like that is that Kris never judged anyone by their skin color or sexual preference,” the grieving mother said.  “If you were his friend, you were his friend. They thought it was Brandon because Brandon is gay.  What kind of a man would do this?  Even if Kris had been Brandon, how can you just take a young man’s life?”  The King family acknowledged that Kristofer and Brandon were good friends, and that their son would sometimes stay overnight at his friend’s trailer.  Wininger was away from his home on the night of the attack.  Wells and Wininger had trouble with the “Teak Street Nazis” before.  Their trailer home was adjacent to the swastika-draped Nazi compound, and on at least one occasion members of the hate group had tried to break into their home.  They had shouted racial and anti-gay epithets at them for weeks before the double stabbing.  The St. Petersburg Times also reports that Guy King, the murder victim’s father, received a Christmas card from Ditulio, decorated with a tombstone drawn on the front that read, “Rest In Peace. Here Lies Dead Faggot.”  The message inside: “I hope your Christmas is full of memories of your dead gay son. Merry f—— Christmas.”  The card was signed, “Syn,” Ditulio’s nickname among the Nazis, according to Pasco County prosecutors.  Authorities are treating the case as a hate crime as well as murder and assault.  Ditulio, who was 20 at the time of the attack, is charged with first degree murder and first degree attempted murder.  If convicted, he may face the death penalty.  The year following his arrest and imprisonment pending the trial, Ditulio attempted to escape, using hacksaw blades and a makeshift rope made of bed sheets. He was stymied by a tangle of pipes as he tried to saw his way out of his cell through a metal toilet, according to the Tampa Tribune.  Defense attorneys have tried to sew doubt about the identity of the attacker, as well as attempting to play up the mistaken identity aspect of the case in order to lessen their client’s liability.  They successfully argued to the judge that Ditulio’s offensive tattoos covering his face and neck, which he acquired while in prison awaiting trial, would prejudice the jury against their client.  The judge, in a controversial ruling, ordered that a makeup artist would be hired for ten days at the rate of up to $125 a day to cover Ditulio’s tattoos.  Before and after photos of Ditulio may be seen below, courtesy of the local Fox affliliate.  

December 9, 2009 Posted by | African Americans, Anglo Americans, anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Florida, gay men, harassment, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, home-invasion, Law and Order, Mistaken as LGBT, Neo-Nazis and White Supremacy, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, Slurs and epithets, stabbings | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

WaPo: Anti-Latino/a and Anti-LGBT Hate Crimes Spiral Upward Together

briseniabutton2Washington, DC – The Washington Post reports in a late-breaking story that incidents of bias-related crimes against Latino/a people and LGBT people are rising sharply on seemingly parallel tracks, according to FBI findings.  In a June 16 article entitled “Hate Crimes Rise as Immigration Debate Heats Up,” Spencer Hsu, reporter for WaPo, writes that officials are concerned about the abrupt rise in violent crimes against both groups:  “The FBI reported in October that the number of [total] hate crime incidents dropped in 2007 by about 1 percent, to 7,624. But violence against Latinos and gay people bucked the trend. The number of hate crimes directed at gay men and lesbians increased about 6 percent, from 1,195 to 1,265, the FBI reported.”   It should be noted that the actual rise in hate crimes against LGBT people is actually in excess of 28% in the last year, according to the more comprehensive statistics reported by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs.  Shrill voices in the media and organization of xenophobic hate groups on the internet are contributing to this alarming trend.  Most recently, as Mariela Rosario writes for http://www.latina.com, Minutemen stand accused of the murder of a Latino immigrant family.  In a May 30th home invasion attack just now being shared widely in the national media, three members of the anti-immigrant group Minutemen American Defense (MAD) allegedly burst into the Arivaca, AZ house of Raul Junior Flores, 29, and his 9-year-old daughter, Brisenia, and shot them dead.  Flores’ wife using a shotgun returned fire, repelling the attackers, and wounding one of them.  Shawna Forde, 41, Jason Eugene Bush, 34, and Albert Robert Glaxiola, 42, stand accused of the crime.  The stated mission of the Minutemen American Defense is summed up in Forde’s own words, “We will expose and report what we know and find, we will recruit the serious and train the revolutionist, time for words have passed the time for bravery and conviction are now.”  The Pima County (AZ) Sheriff’s Department is still investigating.  The murder of Flores and his young daughter has sparked outrage among Latino/a rights groups.  As The Unfinished Lives Project has previously reported in numerous stories over several months, the tragic

Romel and Diego Sucuzhañay at Brooklyn DA's Press Conference

Romel and Diego Sucuzhañay at Brooklyn DA's Press Conference

victimization of Latino and Latina folk, gay, bi, transgender and straight often converges in a terrible way.  José Sucuzhañay, and his brother, Romel,  Ecuadorans visiting the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, NY were brutally assaulted on the night of December 7, 2008.  Hakim Scott, 25, and Keith Phoenix, 28, beat the Sucuzhañay brothers with a beer bottle and an aluminum ball bat shouting slurs at them for their ethnicity and their perceived sexual orientation.  The savage attack was apparently motivated by a toxic combined hatred of Latino immigrants and gay people.  The brothers, huddled together against the cold, were walking arm-in-arm from a party.  Ironically, José, who died from his wounds, and his brother Romel, are both heterosexual.  José leaves behind a 10-year-old son, Brian, and a 5-year-old daughter, Joanna, who is living with Down Syndrome.  As an attorney for the Sucuzhañay family told the New York Post, “The family has suffered tremendously. It was a brutal murder.”  Scott and Phoenix have been indicted for second-degree murder as a hate crime by the Brooklyn District Attorney, and await trial.  Often set at odds by “common wisdom” and the media, the Latino/a immigrant community and the LGBT community share a truly common need for unity in the face of irrational hatred of “the other.”  The Ecuadoran media covered the crime widely, putting an important face on anti-LGBT hate crimes in the United States.

June 16, 2009 Posted by | anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Arizona, Beatings and battery, Bludgeoning, gun violence, Hate Crime Statistics, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, home-invasion, Latino and Latina Americans, Law and Order, Mistaken as LGBT, New York, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, Racism, Slurs and epithets | , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on WaPo: Anti-Latino/a and Anti-LGBT Hate Crimes Spiral Upward Together

Pattern of severe of anti-LGBT violence increases nationwide

stop hate hand

The Hate Crimes Bill has provided an excellent summary of a new report by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs showing anti-LGBT violence has been on the rise since the murder of Lawrence “Larry” King in Oxnard, California, at the beginning of this year.

“The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) reports a recent rash of at least 13 brutal and violent hate crimes that have occurred throughout the country on the heels of the murder of 15 year-old Lawrence King in Los Angeles and the brutal beating of Duanna Johnson, both in February of 2008,” says the Hate Crimes Bill’s website. “NCAVP reports that these hate crimes may indicate a frightening trend of increases in both the number and severity of anti-LGBT violence.”

The NCAVP findings come after several anti-LGBT hate crimes, including the police beating of a transgender woman in Memphis, Tennessee; the harassment and beating of a gay man on a New York subway; the murder of a transgender woman in Memphis, Tennessee; the alleged police beating of a gay man in Greeley, Colorado; the beating of a priest in Queens, New York, for protecting a group of LGBT youth living at a shelter for homeless youth; the midnight home-invasion and arson, in Central New York, by a self-proclaimed Neo-Nazi, who targeted a sleeping 65-year-old gay man (the victim was able to flee the home, unhurt); the fatal bludgeoning of 18-year-old Angie Zapata, a transgender Latina woman in Greeley, Colorado; the beating of gay man Jimmy Lee Dean, in Dallas, Texas, whose injuries were so severe that he was in intensive care and could not be interviewed or identified until five days after the crime; the severe injury of a man in upstate New York, whose two assailants beat, kicked, and shouted anti-gay slurs until they had broken ten bones in their victim’s face; the attack against an 18-year-old living in St Helens, in the United Kingdom, who died a week later from his injuries; the (at least partially) anti-gay-motivated shooting rampage in a Knoxville, Tennessee, church that claimed two lives and wounded seven others; the mob-beating and stabbing of a man perceived to be gay in Staten Island, New York; the ongoing and escalating harassment (for nearly 8 years) of a gay male couple living in Cleveland, Ohio, by anti-gay neighbors; and the ongoing and escalating harassment (for nearly 20 years) of a gay male couple living in a rural Pennsylvania town, who have suffered incidents of gunfire, vandalism, stalking, acts of intimidation, and the indifference from local police.

In a grim coincidence, more than one anti-LGBT hate crime has occurred in both Memphis, Tennessee, and Greeley, Colorado, since the beginning of 2008.

Unfinished Lives also offers our own analysis of the significance of anti-LGBT hate-crime statistics in the United States. The NCAVP’s findings and the Hate Crimes Bill’s detailed summary confirm what has been a growing concern for LGBT persons living in the United States.

August 19, 2008 Posted by | Arson, Beatings and battery, Bludgeoning, Colorado, gun violence, harassment, Hate Crime Statistics, Hate Crimes, home-invasion, mob-violence and lynching, multiple homicide, Neo-Nazis and White Supremacy, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, police brutality, religious intolerance, stabbings, stalking, Stomping and Kicking Violence, Tennessee, Texas, vandalism | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Pattern of severe of anti-LGBT violence increases nationwide

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