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LEADING STORY: Murder charge filed in Puerto Rico teen slaying

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico, Wednesday, November 18, 2009 — Murder charges were filed Wednesday in the slaying of a gay teenager whose decapitated, partially burned body was found last week, while U.S. authorities said they were still considering whether to make it a hate crime case.

Gay activists expressed disappointment that the suspect wasn't immediately charged with a hate crime, saying authorities in Puerto Rico have never invoked a law covering crimes based on sexual orientation.

The dismembered body of 19-year-old college student Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado was discovered Friday along a road in the interior town of Cayey. Lopez was widely known as a volunteer for organizations advocating HIV prevention and gay rights, and activists are planning remembrance vigils for him in cities including San Juan, New York and Chicago.
                                                                                                                                                                
The suspect, 26-year-old Juan Martinez Matos, was arrested earlier this week and allegedly confessed to killing Lopez and mutilating his body. He was charged with first-degree murder and weapons violations and jailed on $4 million bond.

An attorney for Martinez could not immediately be reached for comment.

Martinez met Lopez while looking for women Thursday night in an area known for prostitution, according to prosecutor Jose Bermudez Santos. Bermudez said the suspect confessed to stabbing Lopez, who was dressed as a woman, after discovering he was a man.

"He has a deep-seated rage," Bermudez said in remarks reported by the newspaper El Nuevo Dia.

"All the information we have is very clear that this is indeed a hate crime," said Pedro Julio Serrano, a Puerto Rico native who is a spokesman for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

A 2002 hate crime law in this U.S. territory has not been applied to any cases involving sexual orientation or gender identity despite calls to use it more aggressively, Serrano said. A suspect convicted of a hate crime offense as part of another crime automatically faces the maximum penalty for the underlying crime. For murder, that would be life in prison.

Serrano said he has identified at least 10 slayings on the island over the last seven years that should have been investigated as hate crimes, including some in which the victims were sex workers.

Two U.S. Congress members from New York, who are of Puerto Rican origin, have suggested prosecuting the case under new federal hate crimes legislation that extended coverage to sexual orientation. President Barack Obama signed it last month.

The FBI is monitoring the investigation, and Lymarie Llovet Ayala, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office in San Juan, said Wednesday that federal prosecutors are considering whether to take on the case.

Puerto Rico has some history of violence against gays. In the 1980s, the island was terrorized by serial killer Angel Colon Maldonado, known as "The Angel of the Bachelors," who was linked to the murders of 27 homosexual people and is serving life in prison.

But the island also is known as a welcoming place for gays, particularly in comparison with more socially conservative Caribbean islands where homosexuals often live in hiding.

"The people of Puerto Rico are very inclusive and accepting of differences," said Serrano. "I think these kinds of crimes show the ugly side of homophobia, but it's a minority of people that are willing to be so violent in expressing their prejudice,"

Serrano said a protest against homophobia was planned for Thursday outside Puerto Rico's Capitol.

16-year-old Jayron Martin of Houston, told police there he was chased down and beaten one day last week after school by a gang of attackers as eight classmates watched. Martin has also said he had told his school principal and his bus driver that he had been threatened, but neither did anything to forestall the attack.

Martin was beaten with a metal pipe and sustained a concussion and numerous cuts and bruises on his arms and hands. The attack ended when a neighbor pointed a shotgun at the attackers and cocked the gun.

November 10, 2009

Janson Mattison Jr., was a 15-year-old gay high school sophomore in Baltimore. His body was found stuffed into a closet at his aunt’s house on Nov. 10. He had been raped, gagged with a pillowcase and stabbed repeatedly about the head and neck. Reports were unclear as to whether he had left his mother’s house and moved in with his aunt, as his grandmother has said, or if he was just visiting the aunt’s house, as other relatives have claimed.

Police have arrested Dante Parrish, 35, a convicted killer, and charged him with first-degree murder in connection with the case. A woman identified as Mattison’s cousin said Parrish was a longtime friend of the family.

November 20, 2009

A Brazillian trans woman at the center of a scandal involving an Italian politician has been found dead in a burnt-out basement. The death of the woman, known only as Brenda, is being treated as suspicious, police have said. She and another Brazillian trans woman were at the centre of a blackmail case involving former Lazio governor Piero Marrazzo. He was allegedly filmed by police taking cocaine and having sex with one of the women. Both were thought to be prostitutes. Marrazzo has admitted taking cocaine and using prostitutes. Prostitution is not illegal in Italy. Brenda was reportedly found half-naked with a bottle of whisky beside her. Two packed suitcases were standing by the door. Before her death, she told prosecutors she had shot footage of Marrazzo partying with prostitutes and taking drugs. She said she destroyed her video but another trans woman, named as Michelle, also had a copy. Prosecutors have suggested that a number of politicians and high-profile figures may have been recorded taking part in embarrassing activities. Brenda was reportedly attacked and mugged last week.
 

ISTANBUL — For Ahmet Yildiz, a stocky and affable 26-year-old, the choice to live openly as a gay man proved deadly. Prosecutors say his own father hunted him down, traveling more than 600 miles from his hometown to shoot his son in an old neighborhood of Istanbul. Mr. Yildiz was killed 16 months ago, the victim of what sociologists say is the first gay honor killing in Turkey to surface publicly. He was shot five times as he left his apartment to buy ice cream. A witness said dozens of neighbors watched the killing from their windows, but refused to come forward. His body remained unclaimed by his family, a grievous fate under Muslim custom. His father, Yahya Yildiz, whose trial in absentia began in September, is on the run and believed to be hiding in northern Iraq.

RELATED NOTE: Last year, a local Istanbul court ruled in favor of disbanding the offices of Lambda, the country’s leading gay rights group, after a complaint that it offended public morality. (The decision was later overturned by a higher court.)