Brandon Teena was a victim of rape and murder for reasons many of us may never understand.  She was born in Lincoln, Nebraska on December 12 as Teena Brandon.  She later cut her hair short and moved to Humboldt in 1993 to live as a man.  She was saving money for a sex-change, but wanted to live like a man even though she did not have nearly enough money.  In fact, she had no money at all, so she forged checks and stole money, which would later get her thrown into jail.  She acted just like a man.  She played cards, hung out with guys, talked about cars, knew how to treat a girl, and even shaved.  She was easily passed off as a pleasant, skinny young man.  She also stuffed a pair of rolled socks in her pants and wrapped her chest in ace bandages.  She was attracted to women, but claimed she was not lesbian because she liked them the way a man would.  In high school he requested to be called masculine names such as Brandon and Ten-a and dated girls from other schools, which many found him as the perfect boyfriend.  In December of 1993 he started dating Lana Tinsdel, who, when he was thrown in jail, got an ex-con, and Brandon's future murderer, to bail him out of the women's section of jail.  She would sometimes reveal her gender struggles, and experienced more than her share of prejudice and misunderstanding.  When "he" was discovered to biologically be a woman by the local police, this whole mess came into play.

On Christmas day of nineteen ninety-three, one week after the law enforcement publiclicized the fact that Brandon Teena was a female, he was raped and assaulted at his friend's Christmas party by two men he later identified as John Lotter and Tom Nissen.  Brandon's worst fear had become a reality, he had been raped by not only one man, but two.  Nissen and Lotter had threatened to kill him if he told the police what had happened that night, but Brandon ignored this threat and sang it to Sheriff Charles B. Laux loud and clear.  Sheriff Laux would later go onto say "You can call it "it" as far as I'm concerned."  When Brandon's sister confronted the sheriff, he told her he didn't want Brandon to do his work for him and that was why he had not arrested Nissan and Lotter.  Nissen and Lotter were searching for Brandon for a whole week before they found him in a farmhouse, helplessly lying under a blanket.  They had been carrying a rope, a hatchet, and a change of clothes for each of them so they could take their blood stained clothes off before returning to town in their car.  They also allowed Lisa Lambert to put her baby in it's crib before executing her.  An innocent guest by the name of Philip De Vine was pleading for his life with a gun to his head before they pulled the trigger.  Although the deputies were convinced Lotter and Nissen were guilty, they were not apprehended until after Brandon's murder.  Local authorities declined to classify this case as a hate crime, although everyone else is convinced it is.  When Lotter went to trial, he pleaded innocent and claimed that he was sleeping in the back of the car while Nissen murdered the trio indide the farmhouse.

John Lotter was sentence to death on February 21,

 1996 in Falls City, Nebraska for the murder of Brandon Teena,

Lisa Lambert, and Philip De Vine.  Leslie Feinberg and the NYC

Gay and Lesbian Anti-Voilence project sought out the help of theUS 

Justice Department to investigate in hopes of prosecutingfor violations of

civil rights through the police's failure to arrest Brandon's "rapists" prior to

his death. Also, transgender activists are concerned with people who

continue to write books and create movies on the case portraying

Brandon Teena as a girl who liked to dress up like a boy. 

One book based on the story of Brandon is All She

Ever Wanted written by Aphrodite Jones.  The

case of Brandon Teena has also reached

out to the Menace Men and Lesbian

Avengers who have vowed to

do everything within their

power to honor his

memory and

sacrifice. 

I truely think that Teena Brandon should have stayed at home as a girl, or at least waited until she had enough money to perform the sex-changing procedure.  I do not believe it was right for Nissen and Lotter to go, rape him/her, then threaten him/her into telling the police what happened that night.  Then, when Nissen and Lotter went to kill Brandon Teena, they could have worn something to cover their faces and spared the innocents.  The least they could have done is spare the mother.  It takes a really sick and twisted individual to allow a mother to set her baby down so it can live, then kill the mother all in one clean sweep.  I really feel bad for the families of the people involved in this case.