True Story Teena Brandon

Now a little about me!

2011-10-06T05:13:00.000-07:00

Some people must be curious to know why I'm so fan of Teena Brandon. I think a little mirror of her mind, maybe I have problems too "not sure" how everyone has problems, that's for sure, but some have more disappointments excessive or grandiose, is my case, I do not know what I am, I live without knowing it, for me there is no prince, and yes more frogs than that, I think any woman waits a prince or out here today are worse than before, and look at that Teena Brandon did not die in a year as old, and the beside her was a kind of disappointment but worse , equal physically assaults. If I'm lesbian? I think I can not answer too, because I disenchanted mens and , and womens in the majority prefer mens, then how I perceive that women rely more on other than a man ..

, I can say that I love who loves me.

Good.

This is me and then the owner of the Blog , Laughs.

Lately I'm not finding many new things about the case, almost everything has already been exposed about Teena, if that be worth something right now is that I also Sagittarian as well, but she is 12 and I am on Dec. 17.

Thanks to the staff of foreign visits by the more things I will publish soon.

2011-09-30T17:53:00.000-07:00

Obrigado todas as visitas galera estrangeira Eua - Germany, e claro agredecimentos a caipirada recalcada que curia meu blog fmzinha lool ! Thank you so much by suport
tratamento iguais sem indiferença vê só? Grande Sp Nordeste vlw aí mesmo tbm por visitar em breve publicarei mais noticias ou fotos oq for ..abç meu povo de Sp saudações a todos q admiram realmente o site e que não somente espiam sem interesse em detalhes sobre o acontecido !!!

Boys don't cry music The Cure band ! Leg. PT ok .

2011-09-28T21:56:00.000-07:00

Here is the video for those who wanted me to publish the Cure's music is the main near the end of the film

Drawings from the movie interspersed with the band!

2011-09-28T21:31:00.000-07:00

What is the best? I sincerely enjoyed all very well produced!

"Brandon Teena" (Hilary Swank) cover of the movie!

The Cure single band music from the movie Boys Do not Cry

Hilary Swank Eyes (movie cover)

Glad a great site that supports the transgender person - Brandon Teena case

2011-09-27T19:31:00.001-07:00

Right terms matter in his story

When Brandon Teena was brutally murdered in 1993, transgender people were largely invisible in the media. A lot has changed, yet nearly two decades later, The World-Herald still fails to recognize Brandon for whom he was. An April 26 news story misrepresented him by not properly reflecting his gender identity and his name.Brandon’s story was re-told in a documentary film, “The Brandon Teena Story,” and in the Oscar-winning“Boys Don’t Cry.” These films help people understand the man whose life was violently cut short at 21-years-old.Our organization wants to stress that sensitivity to gender identification is necessary for responsible and accurate reporting on transgender people. In Brandon’s story, both his name and male pronouns are absolutely essential. To a large degree, the fact that Brandon was a transgender man is one of the reasons his story has reached and impacted so many of us.Being Brandon was the identity he embraced. He was killed because others could not accept and understand that about him.

Site with good news about the case.

Call violence against women (phone) in website only Brazil. Ok! Live abroad? try google, but be sure to call if you or someone you see it being attacked by men . Withdraws ! womens are stronger together.

2011-09-26T18:57:00.000-07:00

A cada 2 minutos, 5 mulheres são espancadas no Brasil

faz tua parte em máximo sigilo tenho certeza as instituições estão apenas para te apoiar totalmente, não hesite !

www.violenciamulher.org.br/

The film project.

2011-08-31T01:28:00.000-07:00

Notes on the movie

In late 1993, a quiet and dusty road southeast of Nebraska led the American media to an abandoned farm, where two ex-convicts have committed a multiple murder. What seemed an inexplicable and brutal killing soon became something much more revealing when it came to light the true story of the killers and victims. Among the dead was Brandon Teena, a young man who lived in town only for a short period, but had already become one of the most charming elements of that community: a playful rebel, a loyal friend and an irresistible lover. But who was he really? And he had incited such a violent reaction?

As soon reveal the headlines, Brandon Teena was not the boy that he and everyone wanted it to be. In fact, despite the fact that a boyfriend seem overwhelming for many women in the region, people were shocked to learn after his death that Brandon Teena was actually a woman, who came from the city of Lincoln, Nebraska, named Teena Brandon. As Brandon Teena was a young man trapped in a world that did not accept, Brandon Teena was a flirtatious fun with beautiful girlfriends who adored him publicly. What puzzled the police, parents and youth in the small town of Falls City that fell in love with him was as a person could take two completely opposite identities - and the fact that everyone had believed until the time he was exposed.

This is the mystery that initially attracted the director Kimberly Peirce for making the film, she said: "Here was a character who had become an icon a few months after his death. Brandon Teena represented many traits of our culture - he was a woman for men, a petty thief, the victim of a hate crime. Writers of true police cases, journalists and feminists were telling their story. There was no doubt it was a dramatic and tragic story. However, the real challenge to tell it was found that there was a human being underneath it all and find out what it was like the skin of Brandon since the first night they went through a boy. When we think of who he was, as we begin to see extraordinary what he did and the strength of their commitment, imagination and creativity. The more the story unfolded, the more I found that the mere fact that this person actually existed was totally exciting. To understand what went into it and find out how he had 'invented' within this fantasy guy, how he managed to find a place in the lives of so many people and it provoked a backlash so intense, it was worth the years it took to figure all this out. "

Peirce went on a five-year odyssey to understand Brandon Teena and turn your story in a dramatic film. The result, Boys Do not Cry, is a story where the mystery is the very human identity. The director explains: "Unintentionally, Brandon provided a sense of adventure and possibility in a place where there was very little of it, and also instilled the feeling that you could move on to realize their dreams. But when his identity was revealed, boy said to be a harmless and eager to please, became totally menacing. The story was classic mythic elements. The trick was to discover the hidden emotional truth and know how to tell it. "

As the real-life murders rural coolly portrayed in Cold Blood and The Executioner's Song, Kimberly Peirce saw the murderers as a contemporary evocation of dreams and desires, lost innocence and youth crimes nomads. Although no one could know exactly what happened during the short life of Brandon Teena, the director used a combination of trial transcripts, media coverage, interviews with local youth, the actual participants and your own imagination to probe the minds and souls of real characters, and with it all, decide on building your own version of this puzzle.

The facts of the case were terrible. Several days before Brandon's death, on Christmas Eve, two ex-cons, John Lotter and Thomas Nissen, Brandon raped and then took him to a hiding to avoid betraying that he, along with people who were with him. However, behind the facts there was an even more disturbing story about the journey of a troubled young man through the paths of identity, gender, class, violence and fate, with the backdrop of an arid landscape of rural America.

But the costume had a dark side. To repay attention in profusion, Brandon has become not only a thief of hearts, but a real thief, stealing bank cards, forging checks and using credit cards illegally girlfriends. In the end, these are criminal activities that ended up revealing the identity of Brandon. But it was the intensity of desire to Brandon - the shape in your own costume, lure people into this fantasy and realize their dreams of true love - that, in fact, Peirce attracted to the project.

The basic story was that Peirce saw a couple of Nebraska on the run, a misfit among misfits looking for love, who assumed the persona of a "perfect boyfriend" to beautiful young lonely, innocent and not so privileged. Brandon was everything a woman wants: loving, gentle - and he knew kiss. It was beautiful. A perfect gentleman. He knew how a woman wanted to be treated. Peirce often heard these comments from friends and former girlfriends. Brandon was a fantasy so skillfully drawn that even those who knew him intimately refused to doubt.

In April 1994 the director was being formed by the faculty of Columbia and was preparing his thesis / screenplay about a Civil War spy who passed by man when he read for the first time, the story of Brandon Teena. Peirce was fascinated by the tradition of women who experienced men in the roles of soldiers, spies and musicians throughout American history, but this was a different story. The story of Teena Brandon seemed to embody all the issues about identity that Peirce had sought in his script as he opened the Civil War to vital issues of American mythology and transcendence of love.

She writes: "I was enchanted by the story of Brandon. There was a girl living in a country town with little money and few - if there was one - to copy models and become the person I wanted to be. I was delighted by this someone who wanted to be loved for who he was and the courage it took to make your dream a reality in the harsh landscape of the American heartland. Then, finally, it reinvents itself in your ideal fantasy man. It's something very American venture, to reinvent itself , out into the world and find someone who accepts you as you really are. At a time when men are struggling to define themselves, it's amazing what Brandon did. It is a classical myth, although it was Brandon's life. I knew If we can capture the courage and humor experienced by Brandon, this character could be really wonderful. "

For the producer Christine Vachon, Boys Do not Cry was a fascinating glimpse of an American tragedy. She notes: "The story of Brandon Teena looked into the imagination of America. It's the classic premise of a stranger who arrives in town and changes everything, but it is also about building an identity - and endlessly fascinating subject. There is something very exciting in the search for Brandon and it's hard not be attracted. It is not a biography or a story about a real crime, but a story true to the spirit of Brandon Teena, who became a symbol of freedom to be who we want to be. " Producer John Hart adds: "The film is partly an assessment of our culture. The most violent crimes are usually committed in places that seem to be the safest. In a multicultural environment, the individual is celebrated, in homogeneous environments the individual is seen as a threat. "

When Peirce became interested in the story of Brandon Teena, she devoted herself to a huge investigation into the case and about the people involved, wanting to explore and evaluate what really happened in Falls City. She explains: "I always had the need to know the hidden side of things. I'm the kind of person who can not sleep if you do not know the truth. So I had to write this story. First, they had to answer some basic questions: Who was Brandon and he had lived this way? Who were the teenagers, and they really believed he was a boy? Why John Lotter and Thomas Nissen Brandon became friends and how much they know? Why his love for Lana was so strong the two and that their happiness was so threatening to people, to the point of having to destroy it? Why Brandon stayed there if I knew I had problems? ".
The director knew the answers were in Falls City, Nebraska. She continues: "The drama of the life of Brandon and the center of the film revolved around the events that occurred with him in Falls City - how to seduce people into a new city, as was accepted by these people, his love for Lana and the discovery of his identity. All this led to the murder. "
In Falls City, Peirce interviewed Lana Tisdel, Brandon's true love. Tisdel opened up and talked about her feelings for Brandon and his struggle between accepting and denying who he was. Peirce also interviewed the mother of Lana, the sheriff of Falls City, police and social workers as well as the self-proclaimed "people wall" - the local boys who spent the night at the Qwik Stop wall. From these interviews, she developed her portrait of nightlife in Falls City where the fun included karaoke, skiing and handles car with police on dirt roads.
"I was tracing the path of Brandon. The whole thing took shape when I sat down on the farm where he was killed at the spot where there was still blood on the carpet. Suddenly, I realized that was where it all ended, it was here that the person incredible died. Sitting there, it occurred to me several questions regarding why Brandon end up dead on that farm on the border of Nebraska. I knew I could not rectify his death, but I thought it might make it understandable. Thereafter I had to make sense of it all and give life to Brandon, "says the director.
Despite their hunger for information, Peirce was shocked to realize that very little of that obtained in Falls City was true. She reports: "It was interesting to observe how people's stories changed during the time I was there. Sometimes, people lie to themselves and sometimes for me. But I think people are always emotionally true, even when they are lying. The lies allow us to better understand the person who is counting. Lana was lying to me throughout the interview, but their lies portrayed his relationship with Brandon - the emotional truth was just poured. From this emerged what became is the center of the story: the love between Brandon and Lana, and how do I represent in the film. I wanted their romance was embodied in a fantasy and that still remain very real. "
For Peirce, that was the subject of the film: when the knowledge of anything - gender, identity, or even the truth of what happened to a person - it is sure? Or is the only truth is what we feel deep in our hearts? Brandon added something to Lana that she had never experienced or known in his life: real intimacy. Brandon became a kid better than the boys were. "He" knew what girls wanted and wanted to give it to Lana.
Throughout the journey of discovery of Peirce, the story of Teena Brandon went on to captivate the imagination of the country in the coverage of TV news in the crime pages of newspapers and intellectual analysis on the cultural significance of Brandon. Brandon became a mystical figure, somebody that reflected many different aspects of human existence in his short life.
Of all the people who have studied Teena Brandon, Kimberly Peirce should have collected the largest amount of information. That still was not enough. Although he used most of the facts he could to build his portrayal of Brandon, she also had to trust your own instincts about life and the myth of Brandon to tell the story. Peirce recalls, "I started with a real story. Ten thousand pages of transcripts, as well as a huge number of private interviews with people involved, but most people contradicted the testimony of others. In the end, I realized I had to look Brandon built the myth with the truth of my own life and experience and, thereafter, to distill the emotional truth between the lines of this story. So, I had the opportunity to tell something more true than what really happened and to show a life entire two hours of entertainment. It was a transformation of truth in fiction and then again in truth. "
Christine Vachon has worked with many promising new directors and totally believed in Peirce's passion for the project. "Kim's vision was so bright, she breathed and lived this story. Our job was to provide an atmosphere in which to do their best work," says the producer. Another producer, Eva Kolodner, Peirce worked with to provide this atmosphere. Kolodner was drawn to this love triangle that directs Boys Do not Cry for its surprise ending. She notes: "The center of the story is the love story between Brandon and Lana, as most love stories, challenges and expectations of society. Noticed Kim What is the story of Brandon Teena was not just about his tragic murder and brutality he experienced at the end of his life, but on this incredible love that he discovered on has finally found someone who would accept it as it was. "
Peirce got additional inspiration to draw the fine line between factual truth and a deeper truth to tell the story from literary works about U.S. crimes, including The Executioner's Song, Norman Mailer, and In Cold Blood, Truman Capote, studies psychological murder, as The Killer Inside Me (about Ted Bundy), Ann Rule, and crime movies, like Scarface, Bonnie and Clyde, Butch Cassidy, Badlands, Dog Day Afternoon, Goodfellas and The Night of the Hunter . The director and co-writer found himself in the American tradition of dissecting small town crimes. "Americans love to extremes, and against the arid landscape of the Midwest, violence and dreams become more contrasting. While we know that the interior is not always what it seems. That's where the violence and fear, the loss and love, become more intense. It's amazing where myths are born, "Peirce theorizes.
Everyone involved in the project knew from the beginning that the film could easily fall into a dismal sensationalism, especially given the allure of the tabloids by Brandon - but this was never an option. "From the beginning, people were curious about the story, but many did not see the fascination of this broader - issues of class, love and identity. Kim seen it all and brought up," says Kolodner.
What also fascinated by the producer was the dense atmosphere of desire present in the script, explains: "There is much desire tissue in this story. The passionate desire between Brandon and Lana. Sublinear desire that other people have for Brandon. The desperate desire to know what is happening. The desire of the inhabitants of the city of Brandon become what they want. Everywhere we look, the desire emanates around Brandon. Desire makes the story much more intriguing than the mere fact that someone who was dead. That's what makes the film a story about how two people go after what they want. "
With Brandon Teena, the actress Hilary Swank made the most complex role of his career, playing several different people under the same skin. The incredible nature of the story of Brandon is the result of the fact that many people believed this fantasy, and Hilary Swank knew it had to inspire that same belief while revealing the emotional truth of his character. Although a native of Lincoln, Nebraska, the actress had not heard of Brandon Teena even read the script. She was immediately drawn to the role. "I saw the film as a story about courage, about someone who dared to live life the way she thought it should be, the way she wanted," says the actress.
Swank was convinced that the identity crisis of Brandon was the key to the impact in Falls City, as revealed: "I wanted to show Brandon as a person who was chasing his dreams and trying to be accepted. All of us can identify with that because we also want to realize our dreams and be loved for what we are. But Brandon got stuck in a place where all were in compliance, sat up and dressed in a manner to be accepted ... and she broke all the rules " .
For producer Jeff Sharp, Swank was the perfect choice for the role in the film. "When we started to climb the actors for Boys Do not Cry, we knew we found our Brandon Teena was a great challenge. Our fears were assuaged when Hilary Swank took a plane to New York to audition. Passing by the reception of our office Hilary put all that long blonde hair in cowboy hat and passed by the receptionist, who announced that a boy had come to take the test. Climb Hilary made possible the realization of Brandon Teena, "says Sharp.
Then Swank underwent a transformation and had the chance to live on the skin of the opposite sex. She spent six weeks doing vocal training and exercising with a personal trainer to get more muscular forms. Then, his long locks were cut and his hair dyed a darker shade. The team had access to the picture of Brandon and the similarities were amazing. To test your male character - and so she could dive in Brandon Teena - Swank walked through the city in the skin of a man. She said: "I was happy to be able to test how I was doing as a kid. People talked to me like I was a kid and I actually looked into her eyes to see how they were perceiving me. If you were seeing through me. It was very intense. It gave me a sense of how Brandon felt. It was not just a role for her. It was his life. I learned a lot about humanity, about how the simple act of cutting the hair and speak with the voice a little more thick can change the way people act with us, and also how people judge others by appearance. "
For the cast and crew would accept as Brandon, the first day of rehearsal Swank appeared on the skin of her male character. "I did not want anyone to see me in high heels and short skirt. From the first moment, everyone treated me like I was a kid. I was more of a 'faces' of the set and, sometimes, back problems and had to be Hilary, "says the actress.
Brandon Teena's fate began to change when he won the love of Lana Tisdel, a pretty blonde girl of 19 years and also the most popular of Falls City. Lana fell in love with Brandon so he paid his bail to get him out of jail and was on his side when he discovered his big secret - even when his childhood friend turned against Brandon. To Lana, the filmmakers chose the actress Chlloë Sevigny, who personifies the young man who can find the substance of his dreams in the young man who came from Lincoln. "I also grew up in a small town and buying and Lana. When she meets Brandon, a person who was not like anyone around her, she sees a chance to escape. She had never seen such enthusiasm for life, and this counting. He was really gentle and romantic with her and she had never been treated well by a guy before, "says Chlloë.
Peter Sarsgaard stars as John Loter that in real life, is waiting on death row to be executed for the murder of Brandon Teena, a crime he committed when he was 22 years old. In a way, John was a reflection of Brandon. As this, he had passed several times by social services. But when their paths cross, the fears and insecurities of John exploded into brutal violence. Sarsgaard explains her character: "Brandon arrived in the city and allowed people to dream. But when John felt deceived, came to see Brandon as a 'thing', rather than as a person. And that allowed him to do everything he wanted . John has always been obsessed with Lana, and in his mind, he gave Lana to Brandon so he could control both. "
Peirce gives more details about the relationship of the two murderers: "John and Tom (Thomas Nissen) had several stints in prison and in some ways, they were bombs ready to explode. At the same time, I think they were trying to figure out how to act like men . They were attracted by Brandon and intimacy he offered and what it represented unconsciously frightened them. I think we all are afraid of being impostors, they were discovered, but I also think that sometimes we attract exactly what has the power to reveal and destroy us. The irony is that Tom and John were afraid of losing their masculinity as much as Brandon. When Brandon learns that - that was the antithesis of them - it was a girl who could be a boy rather than many, it threatened their masculinity and shook their identities. When the fantasy Brandon evaporated, turn to him as brutally as they had envisioned. "
The director continues: "I am thrilled with John. He was a boy who had been separated from his mother too small. Later, when he began stealing cars, said it was able to return home to his mother. He needed love. But he was also very charismatic and attractive - a dangerous form. Peter (Sarsgaard) had the challenge of showing the need for love while showing the possibility of threat. The violence has a seductive power and he got through it. " The accomplice in the murder of John, Thomas Nissen, was played by Brendan Sexton III.
Boys Do not Cry was filmed in Dallas, Texas, and its surroundings, which passed through the empty plains of Falls City, Nebraska. It was decided that it would be very difficult to shoot in Falls City, where the controversy over life and death of Brandon has lifted up the spirits. However, Peirce was determined to portray the world she had seen in Falls City and found in six Texas cities architectural similarities, cultural and behavioral aspects that enabled him to spend the same emotion that Brandon felt upon arriving in Falls City.

List actors :

Hilary Swank - Brandon Teena

Chloë Sevigny - Lana Tisdel

Peter Sarsgaard - John Lotter

Brendan Sexton III - Tom Nissen

Alicia Goranson - Candace

Alison Folland - Kate

Jeannetta Arnette - Mrs. Tisdel

Rob Campbell - Brian

Matt McGrath - Lonny Brandon

Cheyenne Rushing - Nicole

Brief review staff :

2011-08-30T09:09:00.000-07:00

Brandon Teena suffered everything this with plenty of reasons but not supporting thefts that she did, but looking at the world in general there is a large population full of prejudice against gay men or lesbian, and of course there are people who pretend to like gay or even pass for a gay audience for itself, but if I see it more as a nuisance, half, from the rape that caused it, but maybe she was so radically in the ways of acting in a way was very smart because he stole up to give gifts for girlfriend, I think she disturbed when she falls over itself and analyzed it was not a man is as normal to see people who are heterosexual in the world, and maybe she saw falcilmente would not accept any work in order to annihilate the robberies he did. The world would be better, but the way of her vision is so realistic vision " Not everyone accepts all or most like to accept the difference when it is big " in world, but the sad truth is that, many make lie as says it opposed, or worse even say what it is worse (like that), at the bottom do not really accept that fact, sometimes it takes up to someone as different from normal, looking different than dealing with a right to demean or humiliate since they are familiar with the normal pattern of people. What we have planted bear fruit, and other such fruits might be cruel, you create is like a lot of plants and watering them with contempt, not just what we planted ourselves that we acquire, get involved with something beyond that will be " grown " this has result may end up reaching people who are not the same, There is something that affects the personal choice (our morals) and superfluous things there that are just nonsense for a person to get to the point of becoming a killer just like the Tom Nissen underestimated by little (with the student plays the person's IQ) .

The world with love has compassion, 'no love' has aggression !

More photos that I found interesting and few have seen!

2011-08-30T07:13:00.000-07:00

Brandon (right) and his sister Tammy.

Brandon in the middle of the photo

Brandon right side again

A smile " toothpaste."

Lesbian activist Carolyn Gage explain more about .

2011-08-30T00:15:00.000-07:00

Brandon was born female, but felt male inside. Her story outraged many and captured headlines, and it has been powerfully re-told in the film Boys Don’t Cry and in the award-winning documentary The Brandon Teena Story. But to a few people in Nebraska, it is simply the sad tale of the child, sibling and friend they loved and lost.
Brandon Teena was born Teena Brandon in Lincoln, Neb., on December 12, 1972. Her mother, Joann, remembers she was handful at an early age. “As she was growing up, she was ornery and full of life,” she says. “She was a prankster, and she was a tomboy.”Although Brandon carried out life publicly as a boy, her mother says she refused to acknowledge her daughter’s new persona at home. Brandon’s growing frustration as she tried to date other women, coupled with the humiliation and name-calling she faced in town, led her to attempt suicide. Her best friend, Sarah Lyons, says she took Brandon to a crisis center.

I want to talk about an inconvenient truth. I want to talk about the fact the person who was named Teena Brandon was a survivor of incest. You won't hear this mentioned in Boys Don't Cry, and you won't hear it mentioned in the documentary "The Brandon Teena Story." You won't read about it in the current Wikipedia entry. It is, like I said, inconvenient. "The Inconvenient Truth About Tina Brandon" is an inconvenient essay. It has a history of publication rejections. It has been construed as transphobic, and it has been challenged for disrupting tenets of Queer Theory. This is to be expected, because it is about trauma, and trauma is trauma specifically because it resists being accepted or assimilated. If this paper fit comfortably into existing categories of identity there would have been no need to write it and Teena Brandon might be living today.In my experience, protracted conflict can be an indication of inadequately and/or inaccurately conceived contexts. Trauma research offers radical perspectives on identity, both lesbian and trans, and opens up new space for dialogue, space with a possibility of common ground. Trauma literacy can inform radical feminism, and I wrote the paper with that intention. Does this essay belong in a journal issue with the title "Are Lesbians Going Extinct?" The answer is "no," if that means it should insist that Teena Brandon was really a lesbian with a case of mistaken identity. This paper does not make that claim. What it does claim is her status as an unrecovered survivor of incest with Complex PTSD who appeared to be in active syndrome up to the time of her death. I believe this paper does belong in this issue of Trivia, which is why I submitted it. Many lesbians are survivors of child sexual abuse. The last decade has seen increasing numbers of biological women who formerly identified as lesbians (like Brandon) transitioning to claim male identities. Positions in the lesbian and trans communities have become polarized, opening deep divisions between us. Accusations of "essentialism," "pathologizing," "misogyny," and "patriarchal privilege" are hurled back and forth across the battle lines.

She explains about misogyny :

If gender is considered an aggregate of sex-caste markers in a system of dominance based on biological sex, then it is simplistic and misleading to characterize it as "performative." Viewed in the context of a patriarchal culture, gender is emblematic of a system of dominance in which women are universally oppressed as a caste.According to the studies of Jacobs and Herman, the victimized daughter's repudiation of a female identity and her internalization of an idealized male represent responses to childhood sexual abuse.The victimized daughter who adopts a male persona is not "fucking with gender." Gender has fucked with her, and, in attempting to identify with the power that has hurt her, she is adopting the strategy of a desperate child whose only option has been to alter her perception of herself.What the transgender movement calls gender-fucking is simply an exercise in moving markers rather than any fundamental change in gender. Gender still exists. It is still an organizing structure for society. What's different is that you just 'do' it differently: it is 'allowed' to be attached to different bodies. The aim of transgender politics is to allow you to be 'be' the gender that you 'are.' However, being your gender still means what you wear, what you do, how you express yourself and is still attached to fundamental notions of what it means to be men and women… And it's no surprise that what is female and what is male in this view exactly tracks what is already defined as male and female. (Corson, 3)Transgender politics does not disrupt the positions of men and women in the gender hierarchy, but what it does do is "render women's choices to oppose this hierarchy as women and on behalf of women incomprehensible."(Corson, 3)In addition to its participation in the larger political system of male dominance, the GID diagnosis also acts on a more personal front to protect the perpetrators. If the victimized daughter's "gender dysphoria" is a post-traumatic response to sexual violence, it reflects an attempt to dissociate, or split off, the trauma.A trauma that cannot adequately be represented or narrated remains estranged. It is an alienated chunk of experience that resists any assimilation into the personhood of the host on whom it feeds. Dissociation can also be understood as a narrative act. It narrates fragmentation, breakage, rupture, disjunction, and incommensurability. (Epstein and Lefkovitz, 193) .
Is this a lesbian paper that belongs in lesbian space? That question can be hotly debated, and what better qualifier for inclusion?

Carolyn Gage is a lesbian feminist playwright, performer, author, and activist. The author of nine books and more than fifty-five plays, she is the 2009 winner of the Lambda Literary Award in drama. Her website is www.carolyngage.com

Some magazines and books that contain more information about Brandon Teena

2011-08-28T22:15:00.000-07:00

Search & Found !

Boys Don't Cry Searchlight Productions, Director Kimberly Peirce, 2000.“The Brandon Teena Story”, by Susan Muska and Greta Olafsdittir, Zeitgeist Films, 1998.“Execution of Brandon Teena's Killer Stayed," March 6, 2000. www.datalounge.com.Hohlt, Jared. "Double Trouble: The Two Lives and One Murder of Teena Brandon," Oct. 7, 1999."John Lotter Convicted in Death of Teena Brandon," Press release, Falls City, Nebraska, 1995.Jones, Aphrodite. All She Wanted. New York: Pocket Books, 1996."The Life and Death of Teena Brandon," American Justice, A&E, 2000."Nebraska Court Rules Former Sheriff was Negligent in Cross-Dressing Woman's Murder," AP, April 20, 2001."What Transsexuality is," www.transsexual.org.

Want to escape the condemnation !

2011-08-27T20:39:00.000-07:00

Lotter Appeals

Once in prison, John Lotter began to fight his conviction for the triple murder in Humboldt, Nebraska in 1993. He’d been unprepared for Marvin Nissen to take the stand, describe their week-long premeditation, and then turn on him as the shooter. Nissen had said that he’d merely stabbed one of the victims, Teena Brandon, after she was shot to make sure she was dead. For his cooperation, he’d received life in prison, while Lotter faced execution.Lotter claimed that contrary to Nissen’s testimony, Nissen himself had been the shooter, and Lotter could prove it. According to Kevin O’Hanlon for the Associated Press, Lotter believed that DNA testing on gloves, shoes, and clothing that Nissan had worn on that fateful New Year’s Eve would exonerate him, because blood from at least one other victim, if not both, would be found, and that it would show patterns of high velocity spatter consistent with a shooting. Thus, Nissen would be caught in a lie about where he was at the time each person was shot. In 2001 Lotter petitioned Richardson County District Judge Daniel Bryan, under the Nebraska DNA Testing Act, to order the test. Since he was indigent, Lotter also asked the state to fund it.Prosecutors protested this appeal, pointing out that Lotter could have requested DNA testing during his 1995 trial but did not. Yet Soucie claimed that the kind of testing they sought (named in State v. Lotter S-02-1072, 266 Neb. 758 as Power Plex 16 amplification and multiplex identification system with the ABI Prism Genetic Analyzer) had not been available in 1995. He also pointed out that until 1997, DNA evidence was not declared legally admissible in Nebraska. In addition, Lotter had not known until the trial that Nissen would be testifying against him. He had not expected to need any such proof. Lotter also claimed that there was no evidence that he was even with Nissen in the farmhouse at the time of the shootings, other than Nissen’s word.The State argued that there was other evidence against Lotter, including his theft of the murder weapon earlier in the day, he successful efforts to obtain the gloves and knife used in the crimes, his appearance with Nissen just prior to the murders, Lotter’s stated desire that day to kill someone, and his effort to seek a false alibi from his girlfriend during the time the murders had occurred.Judge Bryan rejected Lotter’s petition, saying that DNA testing would not indicate how blood had gotten on the gloves or clothing, and that spatter patterns would only indicate that Nissen had been near the victims when they were shot, not prove that he was the shooter. And even if Nissen had been mistaken in how close to a victim he was that night, contrary evidence would not necessarily catch him in a lie, since memory can be faulty. Thus, none of the claims had merit, in terms of proving exculpatory evidence.In June 2003, Lotter’s attorney, Jerry Soucie, took his petition to the Nebraska Supreme Court. In another appeal to get a new trial, Lotter also argued that his trial judge made an error when he barred testimony from an inmate, Jeff Haley, who had shared a cell with Nissen at Lincoln CorrectionalCenter and who’d allegedly heard incriminating comments as to who had actually committed the murders. Lotter also asked the high court to declare the electric chair to be cruel and unusual punishment, and stated that a 2002 Supreme Court ruling in an Arizona case indicated that in death penalty cases, juries, not judges, should decide a killer’s fate. Lotter had been sentenced by a three-judge panel. If he could not get a new trial, his sentence should at least be commuted to life. With the addition of favorable DNA evidence, he would no longer be death eligible.In other words, the condemned John Lotter was throwing everything he had into his final appeal.On July 11, 2003, Nebraska’s high court said that the Supreme Court’s 2002 ruling was not retroactive, and therefore Lotter was not entitled to a new trial. Nor would his death sentence be commuted to life, since the jury had ruled that the two men had equal culpability in the incident and Nissen’s lesser sentence had been the result of his cooperation, not his status of diminished culpability. Had he not cooperated and been convicted just on what he described of his participation, it was likely that he may also have gotten a death sentence. Yet Lotter still had hope for his appeal to have DNA testing done.By the end of September, that hope disappeared. On the 26th, the Nebraska Supreme Court unanimously upheld Judge Daniel Bryan’s earlier decision to reject the petition for DNA testing. The conclusion of the justices was that DNA findings would not offer conclusive proof that Lotter had been wrongly convicted or wrongly sentenced. They cited that prosecutors had pointed out that Lotter had wrapped the knife and gun in the gloves, so blood from all three would likely be present on the gloves. “DNA evidence is not a videotape of a crime,” Judge John Wright was quoted as saying in the Sioux City Journal. They agreed with Judge Bryan that a DNA test would not determine just how blood might have gotten on the gloves. That means the test would not establish that Nissen had shot anyone. In short, the DNA test would not offer Lotter what he believed it would in terms of evidence against Nissen and in favor of his claim of innocence.

Thus, John Lotter still awaits his fate.

News about John Lotter and more about what happened to the killers.

2011-08-27T04:34:00.000-07:00

After 18 years: Federal Judge Rejects Lotter's Latest Appeal In Teena Brandon Case

Lotter. Photo: Nebraska Department of Corrections.

Condemned killer John Lotter lost again.

U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf has dismissed Lotter’s latest appeal of his conviction for the notorious murder of Teena Brandon and two other people 18 years ago.

The 1993 case became famous when the story of Brandon, who sometimes represented herself to be a man, was the subject of the 1999 film “Boys Don’t Cry.” Hillary Swank won an Oscar for her portrayal of Brandon.

In refusing to hear Lotter’s appeal, Kopf said it had been reviewed by the courts numerous times and that Lotter had been well-represented by a series of attorneys. He concluded the judicial exercise provided Lotter a fair trial, thorough appeals and continuing representation.

Insofar as observing Lotter’s rights, Kopf said, the state needdn’t have second thoughts about executing him if his sentence eventually is carried out.

Lotter and co-defendant Thomas Nissen were charged with first-degree murder for the slayings of Brandon, 21; Lisa Lambert, 24, and Phillip DeVine, 22 In a Richardson County farmhouse.

Brandon had accused Lotter and Nissen of raping her. Lotter later said he and Nissen had been angered by her portrayal of herself as a man.

Nissen testified against Lotter and was sentenced to life in prison. Life imprisonment or the death penalty are the only sentences permitted in Nebraska after a conviction for first-degree murder. In 2007 he recanted his story and said that he, not Lotter, shot the three victims. His earlier story was that Lotter did the shooting. If the courts had believed Nissen’s story, he would not have been eligible for the death penalty since he previously had been tried and sentenced.

There are 12 men on Nebraska's death row. No execution dates have been set.

The farmhouse in Humboldt

It was a cold morning on December 31 in Humboldt, Nebraska, the heart of the Midwest. While many households were rising to prepare to bring in 1994, one sat ominously silent. Anna Mae Lambert drove up the driveway of the rented farmhouse just outside town to visit her daughter and grandson. In moments, she was calling the police.The Humboldt Rescue Squad took the call around 10:20 a.m. They were prepared for a long day, knowing that some people start their festivities early, and those who drink sometimes let loose demons. The Richardson County Sheriff's Department told them there'd been some deaths at the old farmhouse that had once belonged to Frank Rist. They thought one was a baby. Could they check it out?The rescue crew quickly assembled, picked up a doctor and drove out to the farm, followed closely by Deputy Ray Harrod. No one knew quite what to expect.Potentially, this was a crime scene, so Harrod entered to secure it. The first thing he saw was a young African- American man with a prosthetic leg slumped against the couch. A coffee table lay over his lap. Going closer, Harrod saw that the man was dead. There was an entrance wound in his jaw and an exit wound on the right side of his head. Yet there were no other signs of struggle in the room and nothing about the corpse revealed what had happened. It could have been a suicide, but there was no gun. Had someone taken it?A search of the rest of the house was in order. Harrod moved toward the dining room. Oddly enough, a woman sat at the table feeding a baby. It was she who had made the call to police, she explained. She understood not to disturb a crime scene. She was the grandmother to this child and mother to one of the victims. Victims? That meant there was more than one body here.Anna Mae Lambert directed him to a bedroom.Harrod ventured within, aware right away that the floor was flooded. Lying on a leaking waterbed were two people in their early twenties, a blond woman and a baby-faced young man with brown hair. They both appeared to have been shot execution style. Looking around for a weapon, the deputy found none. He had no idea who they were.

Teena Brandon

When Richardson County Sheriff Charles Laux eventually entered to have a look, he recognized one of the women on the bed as Teena Brandon, 21, who'd reported that John Lotter and Tom Nissen had raped her a week earlier, after a Christmas party.Brandon lay on her back on the lower part of the bed, her legs dangling over the edge and her hands bloody. She was fully clothed, but her sweatshirt showed a large area of blood that had soaked through from her abdomen. Her white socks were pink from watered-down blood soaked up from the floor. Lifting her sweatshirt, officers saw a jagged wound, apparently made by a knife. Further up, a small bullet hole was evident under her chin, surrounded by gunpowder residue. That meant she'd been shot at close range. A fracture on her skull indicated that she'd been hit with a blunt object. Of the three bodies, hers was the most ravaged, so it was possible that she had been the primary target.Lisa Lambert, 24, was partly under the covers, but there was a bullet wound to her right eye. Blood also ran out of her mouth and another wound was found in her stomach. It appeared that's she'd been sitting up in bed when shot.The evidence collection unit of the Nebraska State Patrol was called in. They came out from Lincoln, but had to get an accident reconstruction expert to look at the tire tracks near the front porch, because it was too messed up to get a cast. They then went in to search for weapons and dust the place for fingerprints. A lone footprint and a red spot near the front door were photographed. They assumed that if a gun were located, recovered bullets from the bodies would help them identify it.Checking the victim on the couch, they saw another bullet entry point in his neck. From a wallet found in a bedroom, he was identified as Phillip DeVine, age 19, and it appeared that he'd been sleeping there.Six shell casings were found in the flooded bedroom, along with a spent bullet and a live cartridge. A cigarette lighter was collected as potential evidence, as were the contents of an ashtray. Along with swabs from two blood spots, these were bagged and sent to the criminalistics lab in Lincoln. Then the bodies were removed to the hospital morgue for autopsy. Arrest warrants for sexual assault were issued for John Lotter and Marvin Thomas Nissen, and when apprehended, they would be questioned in the matter of these murders. They were under heavy suspicion.It didn't take long to find out that three people had needlessly died because two young men had been unable to deal with someone who was different.The hospital where they took samples for a rape kit, was an ordeal, but the question was different.Richardson County Sheriff Charles B. Laux had never heard this kind of thing before. He knew what rape and assault were, but this creature who passed himself off as a boy was something completely new and exotic... and not in a good way. Of their way to question her, he obviously found it to be disgusting sexual preferences, and was later quoted as referring to it as "he."In fact, transgender individuals are often met with confusion, prejudice and utter disbelief. Also known as gender dysphoria, the psychiatric bible, DSM-IV, lists of transsexuality as a persistent gender identity disorder. In general, it is a state of conflict between sexual orientation and physical self. In other words, sex-related structures of the brain associated with gender are the opposite of the sexual organs físicas.As people born as girls feel more oriented in the world as boys, and boys and girls. They may feel trapped and resentful miserably. The meaning of sex is part of their identity, and it is disconcerting to be expected to act a certain way when that's not how things feel.This conflict becomes part of consciousness early on, when the girls played to be tomboys and boys played at being a sissy. They begin to doubt themselves, and can even develop a deep self-loathing, caused by being out of tune an intolerant society. Your needs become a source of embarrassment and suffering. They are often driven to "fix" themselves, but can not always achieve it, and the estimate of suicides by 30 years of age among transsexuals is about 50%. Even going to a therapist does not necessarily work, since some mental health professionals believe it is a matter of curing the "disease". Often, doctors will encourage hormone treatments and sex change operations to bring gender orientation in line with the physical body. This seems to be the best approach and has been very successful with many transsexuals, but not everyone can afford. The transition also can be quite painful.Homosexuality sometimes occurs in conjunction with transsexuality, but not always, to take a person like Brandon is also a lesbian is not understand how Brandon expressed his identity. Nor is it about the sexual fetish known as cross-dressing or transvestism. Brandon may have looked feminine, but he felt better as a man.Sheriff Laux was supposed to be asking questions specific to Brandon's rape and assault, but he stepped aside to ask things like, "Why do you girls think you're a guy?" And "Do you kiss them?" He hinted that something was wrong with Brandon and insisted that I needed answers because these were issues that arise in court. Brandon reached as prurient and unnecessary, so sometimes he refused to answer. He was later called uncooperative.Laux acted as if he discounted claims to be a virgin, and Brandon kept asking probing questions about their sexual experiences. Brandon was not surprised, he insisted that John Lotter had pulled down his pants and stroked it not? "Not that kind of, ah, call your attention in any way?" He asked. In fact, he insisted on this point, asking him at least three times. He seemed convinced that a man would have a naked woman under his control and can not take the least touch their private parts. He also suggested that during the rape, John Brandon had physically stimulated to get it going.What was said at the end of the interview will never be known because the last part of the tape was erased.Brandon signed a complaint and took the two men would be caught. There was every reason to believe that they can act on its threat, so the sooner they were off the streets, the better.After three days, deputies went to question the suspects and thought they should be arrested, but Laux not allow it. On the fourth day after the sister of Brandon Laux Tammy called to question why the suspects had not been seized, and she was surprised by his atitude.Ele not think it should be interfering. He would do what needed to be done.However, these were men with criminal records. City boys had rejected John as a child, and with brain damage and a low IQ, he was always in a kind of problem or another. Tom was a victim of abuse who suffered from major depression and liked to cut. Both were heavy drinkers, and there was evidence that Tom had abused his wife. May they be guilty of assault was no surprise, then why were they still free?No one knows why Laux could not move on the charge of Brandon, but his decisions allowed them the time needed to carry out his threat.

Hilary Swank as Brandon Teena

The Trial

Marvin Thomas Nissen

Marvin Thomas Nissen was tried first, in February, 1995. His attorney's principal problem was Tom himself. Eager for publicity, Tom had given an interview to Playboy magazine in which he confessed to both the rape and his part in helping kill Teena Brandon. The prosecutor lost no time in adding the journalist to his list of witnesses, because this was an even greater find than the jailhouse snitch to whom Tom had also confessed. Tom was a self-serving blabbermouth.Even so, the jury had trouble finding him guilty of first-degree murder in all the deaths. They deliberated for eighteen hours, and finally convicted him on March 3rd of first-degree murder in the death of Teena Brandon, but second-degree murder in the deaths of Lambert and DeVine. His sentence was delayed until after John Lotter's trial, which meant he could still face the death penalty. Marvin Thomas Nissen did some quick thinking.

John Lotter

John Lotter's trial began on Monday, May 15, 1995. The ten women and two men serving on the jury were brought in from Omaha and sequestered in Falls City.Prosecutor James Elworth told jurors that there was no doubt that Lotter had been involved, and in part it was because he feared that Teena Brandon would testify against him and send him to prison for rape.Police testified that on the night following the discovery of the murders, they found a gun and knife inside a pair of gloves in the Nemaha River, south of Falls City. The gun proved to be the one involved in the crimes, the knife's sheath bore Lotter's name, and blood on the blade proved to be the same type as Brandon's. There was psychiatric testimony to the effect that Lotter was mentally impaired and might not have been able to judge right from wrong. Yet even the psychiatrists conceded that tossing the murder weapon into the river indicated that he certainly knew that what he'd done was against the law.John's former girlfriend, Rhonda Mackenzie, also testified that he had threatened to kill Brandon for duping them fully a week before the murders occurred. Then on the night of the murders, he woke her at 2:30 a.m. and asked her to give him an alibi. (Tom had done the same with his wife, who had noticed the clock reading 3:30 a.m.)Then at the last minute, Tom Nissen cut a deal with the state to save his life. He took the stand. For his truthful account, nothing he said would be used against him and he would not face the death penalty. Defense attorney Mike Fabian attempted to prevent the admission of his testimony, but the judge allowed it. Tom stated quite clearly that he and John Lotter had committed these murders together. Not only that, they'd plotted for six days to kill Brandon, starting the day after they'd assaulted him. They'd gone to Brandon's home in Lincoln, Nebraska, on December 26, 1993, looking for him. The plan was to lure him to an isolated spot and then chop off his head and hands.When their quest went sour, they sat around drinking and obsessing about what had to be done. It had been Lotter's contention, according to Tom, that a dead witness could not testify, and that was the only way to save themselves. Nissen admitted to stabbing Brandon, but said that Lotter had done all of the shooting. Nissen had stabbed Brandon after the first shot because he thought Brandon was still alive. "She was twitching," he said.To everyone's surprise, John Lotter, who'd refused to say anything up to that point except that he was innocent, wanted to testify in his own defense. His attorney advised against it, but he insisted. On the stand, he denied every aspect of Tom Nissen's account, but was soon caught in a lie. Then when he contradicted the testimonies of upstanding, credible citizens, he made things look even worse for himself. By the end, everything he said was in doubt.The jury took only five hours to reach a decision.On Thursday May 25, 1995, John Lotter was convicted of three counts of first-degree murder, three counts of using a deadly weapon, and one count of burglary. The prosecutor sought the death penalty, which was automatically subject to appeal.JoAnn Brandon went after Charles Laux, the cop who had failed to arrest Lotter and Nissen for rape. She sued him and Richardson County in the wrongful death of her child, charging that his negligence and mishandling of the case had resulted in Brandon's murder. He had actively prevented his deputies from making an arrest. Laux said that he was simply trying to avoid jumping the gun and compromising the case. A lower court dismissed the suit, but the Nebraska Supreme Court reinstated it because Laux had actually informed the perpetrators of the complaint, and then had failed to protect the victim. If the allegations were true, the justice said, "Laux laid an essential link in the chain that led to the victim's death." While the lower court conceded, they only gave part of the monetary award, since they calculated the county to be 15% at fault. That amounted to just over $17,000, an insult. However, the Nebraska Supreme Court had ruled that Laux was negligent in his duty to protect Teena Brandon. In addition, his tone in the tape-recorded interview with Brandon was "demeaning, accusatory and intimidating." They ordered the lower court to increase its damage award to JoAnn Brandon to the original amount.Nissen appealed his case to the Supreme Court, and it was turned down.On March 6, 2000, the Nebraska Supreme Court issued a stay of execution of the April 26 execution date. As of this writing, he is still awaiting his fate, with appeals pending.

Fox Searchlight Pictures released a film, Boys Don't Cry, that depicts (with some liberties) Brandon's life and death. Hilary Swank, who played the lead role, won the Academy Award for Best Actress.s) Brandon life and death. Hilary Swank, who played the lead role, won the Oscar for Best Actress.

Novas imagens .

2011-08-27T04:17:00.000-07:00

Teena Brandon & Lana .

Lana and John Lotter ( killer of Teena Brandon )

Tributes to Brandon Teena

2011-08-26T22:00:00.001-07:00

Some movies fan's

Finally I pay homage with this video Teena Brandon

Videos typical of relatives and girlfriends of Teena Brandon

2011-08-26T07:26:00.000-07:00

Part of the true story

The whole movie (online )

2011-08-26T07:03:00.002-07:00

English version

Portuguese version

All about Brandon Teena ( From the real film boys dont cry )

2011-08-26T06:22:00.000-07:00

TEENA RENAE Brandon's mystery was over the moment her body was discovered, facedown on a bed in a farmhouse in Humboldt, Nebraska. It was early in the morning on December 31, 1993, and lying dead with Teena were two others. Each of the three had been shot twice, execution style, with a .38 revolver. "Through and through" is how the coroner would classify their wounds, meaning the bullets had entered the victims' heads from one side and exited the other. In addition, Teena had been stabbed in the liver and her skull had been crushed. She was 21.
Word of the triple murder raced through Humboldt, a town of 1003. At a bar called Big Mike's, townspeople gathered around a police scanner awaiting identification of the victims, and by dark the news came: The first was a local woman, and the second a young man, a friend of hers. The name of the third fatality, the one whose skull had been crushed, was Teena Brandon.
"Brandon?" The locals were perplexed. The barmaid remembered a boy named Brandon living in that house. He had shown up in Humboldt a month or two before and hung out with kids from nearby Falls City. He told people he was from Lincoln, about two hours away. He was small, 5 minutes 5 second or 5 minutes 6 second , but good-looking: blue eyes. a wide mouth, heavy eyebrows, and sandy hair combed into a halfhearted ducktail. He wore Western shirts and looked so young they had carded him at the bar. "Brandon Ray Tenna," his ID had read. "Date of Birth: 12/10/72. Sex: M."
The folks at Big Mike's pieced together bits of news and speculation, and came to a bizarre conclusion: Brandon Tenna, the boy who had waltzed into Richardson County and charmed a local girl off her feet, was dead; and Brandon Tenna had actually been a woman.
Teena Brandon was killed, prosecutors now maintain, by John Lotter and Tom Nissen, jealous friends of a girl she'd been dating. She was killed, essentially, because she was too successful in passing herself off as a man. She underestimated her own attractiveness and the envy it wrought.
Teena Renee Brandon was born to 16-year-old JoAnn Brandon on December 10, 1972 in Lincoln, Nebraska. Teena's father, Patrick Brandon, was a housepainter who had died in a car accident eight months before her birth. She was named for her father's German shepherd, Tina Marie.
JoAnn is a Lincoln native, doe-eyed and slender, who at one time modeled children's clothing for department store ads. She raised Teena and her sister, Tammy, who was three years older, in a trailer park in northeast Lincoln. She was remarried once, from the time Teena was two until she was seven, to a man Teena didn't like. After that, JoAnn said, "it was Tammy and Teena and me against the world. We were the three musketeers."
Where Tammy was prissy and popular, Teena was awkward and impish, tattling to her mom when she caught Tammy kissing a boy. Even though JoAnn didn't have much money, she aspired to do good by her daughters and tried to teach them middle-class values. She bought them nice clothes and sent them to Catholic schools--St. Mary's Elementary and Pius X High School.
But Teena wasn't much of a student, and Pius' strict environment, coinciding as it did with her adolescence, made her feel out of place. She argued with her religion teacher, Father Fucinaro, whenever he lectured on the virtues of abstinence, and she rebelled against the dress code by wearing pants and a tie. She kept her hair short and told people she was allergic to makeup. She was into weight lifting. Teena's friends say she had crushes on a few boys, but she never dated. Her only close friend at Pius was a girl named Sara Gapp, whom Teena cared for so much that when Sara became pregnant, Teena offered to get legal permission to raise the baby with her.

During the fall of 1990, her senior year, an Army recruiter visited Pius. Operation Desert Shield was under way and Teena thought she had found her calling. She planned to enlist and began parading around her mother's trailer in fatigues, but couldn't pass the written entrance exam.
"She was real upset," JoAnn said. "And other things in her life started happening. She started to change."
One day in late December 1990, not long after her 18th birthday, Teena was in her mother's living room, lying on the couch, watching TV. When the phone rang, she answered it. A girl had dialed the wrong number. Five minutes later, the phone rang again.
"Hello?" Teena said. It was another girl this time.
"My friend just told me a really hotsounding guy lives here," the girl said.
"Oh," Teena deadpanned. She knew she had a husky voice.
"What's your name?" the girl said.
Teena drew a breath. "Billy Brinson," she answered, using her uncle's first name and a variation of her own surname. The two girls flirted on the phone for a few minutes. The caller was 13. They made plans to go rollerskating on New Year's Eve.
Teena arrived at Holiday Skate World accompanied by Sara Gapp and a few other friends. She had explained the date to them as a gag, a dare for herself. "We just wanted to see if she could get away with it," Sara said later.
Teena wore her usual clothes--Dockers, tennis shoes and a buttondown shirt--and wrapped her breasts with an Ace bandage. She hooked up with the 13-year-old girl and made it through the evening undiscovered. She even took her hand for a couples' skate, grinning like a loon each time she passed Sara, who watched anxiously from rinkside.
Within a couple of weeks, Teena hit it off with one of the girl's friends, Heather Kuhfahl. Heather was a petite, blonde ninth-grader in the Lincoln public school. She was 14. The two of them began to date, Teena still posing as Billy. Heather was Teena's first kiss.
Thus began the double life of Teena Brandon: uneasy tomboy by day, cool lady-killer by night. As a girl, Teena had never received the kind of fawning she so comfortably unloaded on Heather. And it was reciprocated. Teena's former life seemed. disconnected and thin. She became a glutton for attention and got into trouble trying to impress Heather. She took money from her mother's bank account and bought Heather clothes and a stereo. Together they hustled beer with Heather's mother's credit card and cruised O Street until four in the morning.
School had never been much fun; now it was a big joke. Here was the new Teena Brandon: class clown and queen of the senior pranks--locking pigeons in a classmate's car and removing the toilet seats from the girls' washroom. But she got carried away and stole another girl's leather jacket, and she was failing classes. Just a couple weeks before graduation, Teena was expelled from Pius.
With school out of her life, the evolution of her male persona lurched forward. Teena started shaving her face, stuffing socks down the front of her pants and using the men's room in public. She went through her mother's photo albums and tore up all the pictures of herself wearing dresses. She was absolutely certain that this was what she was meant to be. A boy.
But how convinced was Heather? At one point early in their relationship, she had seen Teena's driver's license and read the name, Teena Brandon.
"It's an Irish name, Tenna," Teena offered. "Most people just call me Brandon. I was only kidding when I said my name was Billy." Somehow, that was enough for Heather. "He was always joking around about things, making up stories," Heather recalled. Like almost everyone who knew Teena as a boy, she still refers to her with masculine pronouns. "I just figured it was like him to make up a name on the phone when he told my friend his name was Billy."
Heather was the type of person Teena would stray little from as she traveled on her path of seduction. She was younger than Teena, sexually inexperienced, naive and poor. And like Teena, Heather had been raised by her mother, who worked several jobs and was rarely at home. She was needy and had never had a boyfriend. In Teena's estimation Heather was a girl she could outsmart and win over, largely because Heather's longings were not that different from her own. "I depended on having Brandon in my life so much," Heather said. "No matter what sex he turned out to be, I wanted him."
The two had been dating only a few months when Teena moved in with Heather and her mother on Holdrege Street. Teena had a number of jobs--pumping gas, working at convenience stores--but couldn't keep one for more than a few months. Once, she was fired when a manager caught her making out with Heather behind the cash register.
JoAnn Brandon blamed Heather for what was happening to Teena--the dressing as a boy, the expulsion, the firings, the stealing. By now, JoAnn and her other daughter had started to follow Teena. They had seen her carrying on with Heather, but they insisted it was some kind of experimental phase that Teena could, with guidance, snap out of. "All I want is to have my daughter back," JoAnn cried to Teena's friend Sara. "Do something." So Sara paid Heather a visit. When she arrived, Heather was on the phone.
"Tenna is really Teena," Sara said to Heather. "She's a girl. Look." She produced Teena's birth certificate.
Heather feigned surprise. "Oh, really?" she said distantly and went back to the telephone.

But if Heather already had some idea, her mother somehow hadn't. The next day, after Sara stopped by the bowling alley where Heather's mother worked and told her Heather was dating a girl, Mrs. Kuhfahl made Teena move out and insisted she leave Heather alone.In January 1992, Sara Gapp, at thbehest of JoAnn Brandon, tricked Teena into a car, telling her they were on their way to Hardee's. Instead, Teena was taken to Lincoln General Hospital, where the Brandons were waiting. After a consultation, a psychiatrist informed Teena that she was having a sexual identity crisis--as if she hadn't known--and dispatched her to the Lancaster County crisis center. She was released three days later, after doctors decided she wasn't a suicide threat.
JoAnn and Tammy persuaded Teena to attend the counseling sessions the doctors required, and sometimes they accompanied her. At first Teena refused to participate, sitting in her chair expressionless and cracking jokes. She was too embarrassed to discuss her sexuality with her family in the room.
JoAnn refused to give up. "I asked her point-blank, 'Hey, we can work through this. Are you a lesbian?'"
"That's disgusting," Teena replied. She had some gay male friends in Lincoln but refused to accompany them to parties where there would be lots of homosexuals. "I can't be with a woman that way. I love them the way a man does. It's like I'm really a man trapped inside this body."
Teena insisted she hadn't been physically involved with Heather. She leaned forward, elbow on table, hand to chin. "I'm going to be a virgin until the day I die," she announced.
They talked some more before Teena got to the subject she'd been blocking out for ten years. "Mom, I was raped," Teena said, choking on her tears. It had happened when she was a little girl, by a male relative who had also sexually abused Tammy. All three Brandons sobbed. Teena and her sister had never discussed it. Their mother was mortified by the revelation.
From that point on, it was virtually impossible to get Teena to talk to her psychiatrists. She preferred not to dredge up any more unhappy or complicated feelings, and no resolution was made about her identity or future. "They called her a compulsive liar," JoAnn recalled. "She stopped attending the sessions after two weeks. They said she didn't need any long-term care and let her go."
"After that," Tammy said, "we didn't know anything."
Transsexuality, a predisposition to identify physically with the opposite sex, is a largely uncharted phenomenon, though it is not uncommon. Roughly one in 50,000 people is diagnosed as transsexual, and recent reports indicate that it is almost as likely among women as it is among men. Although sex-change surgery has been performed in America and Europe since the Fifties, many people who consider themselves to be transsexual have chosen to live as homosexuals, and sometimes transvestites, and to hold on to the bodies they were born with.

Some people consider transsexuality to be nothing more than repressed homosexuality. Indeed, some gay men and lesbians say that when they first became aware of their sexuality, they felt trapped, held captive in a body of the wrong sex. Some were also revolted by homosexuality, much like Teena. It is difficult to know whether Teena was a transsexual or a young woman struggling to come to terms with being a lesbian in an unyielding environment--brought up Catholic in a conservative town, with a grandmother who once called her and a gay cousin "faggots."
Enjoying a popularity she had never known as a woman, the male Teena Brandon lived a peripatetic life. From the time that Teena met Heather to the end of 1993, Teena changed residences at least 19 times, moving in with newfound friends or, when she had to, bunking with family. "If he could stay somewhere one night, then turn it into two, or a week, he was happy," said one friend.
Constantly running from anything that grounded her to her old life, Teena's behavior grew increasingly troublesome. She continued to steal from people whenever she could. While living with Sara Gapp, she ran up an $895 phone bill and stole Gapp's automatic teller machine card. Teena forged checks from the account of her grandmother, who was angry enough to press charges. Her grandmother wasn't the only one to report her. From March 1991 to the end of 1993, Teena was charged with 18 crimes, mostly for forgery or failure to appear in court. She served several short jail terms. Most of the time, Teena stole only to buy her girlfriends gifts. If she made them happy enough, she figured, they wouldn't leave her.
During those three years, there were perhaps a dozen girls who claimed Billy Brinson, Brandon Tenna, Tenna Brandon, Brandon Teena or Brandon Yale as their beau. "Most of them were high school age and would go out with him for, like, a week, until they found out," said 18-year-old Daphne Gugat, who dated Teena in the fall of 1993. "But even after that, he would totally convince you that he was a guy." In fact, there were a few girls who were easily convinced and stayed with Teena for months.
With only 200,000 people, Lincoln didn't allow Teena to run far from her past. Often, when she had found a new circle of friends, an old acquaintance (or even a jealous former girlfriend) would arrive on the scene and blurt out that she was a woman. Other times, she would bump into a former schoolmate who would greet her as Teena.
Teena usually extricated herself from the confusion by telling people she was a hermaphrodite. "It means I was born with both sexes, but deep down inside I am a man," she would say. She had learned the term in biology class, but it didn't serve her that well. Most girls, even if they believed her, were scared away by its sheer freakishness. Time and again, a paramour would profess never to have suspected anything abnormal about Teena; one even said she saw Teena urinate standing up, and two girls, at the same time, claimed to be pregnant with Teena's baby.
In any case, Teena didn't seem to have trouble finding new people to con, new women to woo--women who desperately wanted to be charmed by a man who understood their needs. Her relationships were with girls whose ideal of a man had never been realized until they met Teena, girls with mostly troubled relationships with the men in their lives. Teena was their savior, attentive and affectionate. She was less awkward at 19 or 20 than most of the 16-year-old boys who were her competition. She had charisma. She wrote her girlfriends silly poetry, did their laundry and held their hands in public.
But how did Teena satisfy their sexual needs? That was the trickiest part of the routine, requiring ingenuity on her end and perhaps some denial from her partners, most of whom were virgins. And there was the realistic plastic penis that she attached to herself.
Teena liked to begin sexual encounters with extended foreplay--lots of kissing and ear-nibbling, undressing her partners, sucking on their breasts. But she never allowed anyone to undress her. With all but a few girls, she kept her undershirt and boxer shorts on.
"One time I tried to go down on him," said one of the girls, "and he stopped me. I thought, Great, a guy who doesn't like it even more than I." But when Teena returned the attempted favor, it was glorious. For one of the first times in her life, the girl had an orgasm.
"After that, I don't think there was a time with him when I didn't come," the girl said. "Orally, going all the way, even dry humping." Teena's sex life depended on a population of girls who considered sex nothing more than something they did for their boyfriends. With Teena they began to understand what all the fuss was about.
"Brandon was my great awakening: Sex could be fun and natural," said a girl who had slept with only one boy before meeting Teena. It had been dull with her ex-boyfriend. She would spend a night at his parents' house every weekend and wait for it to be over, staring at the ceiling and looking at the Star Wars wallpaper, the Star Wars curtains.

Teena didn't rush girls into intercourse but instead asked them to let her know when they were ready. She told them she was a virgin. Most of the girls, meanwhile, were too inexperienced to realize that Teena was using a dildo and too shy to look at or touch what they thought was their boyfriend's penis. "I noticed that he could go a long time, and that he usually pulled out as soon as I had mine," recalled another girlfriend, one of the few girls to actually see Teena naked or discover the dildo. "But it wasn't until after he said he'd had a sexchange operation that I noticed it stayed hard afterward. When I asked him about it, he said it was because the only options after the surgery were for it to be hard all the time or for him to use a pump.
"Still, it was funny," she said. "Sometimes I'd feel through his pants and it'd be small, and sometimes it felt like he had a lot more."
There were times when Teena hung around a cousin's dorm at the Lincoln School of Commerce looking for something to do. One day, in March 1993, Teena met Gina Bartu, a freckled 19-year-old secretarial student. It took Teena two days to ask her out, and in another three days, each had told the other "I love you." Soon, Teena had Gina's name tattooed on her arm. "You better not break up with me or I'm gonna have to date only Ginas," Teena would say.
What was it about Gina? Sometimes Teena sat up late at night with her buddies from work and talked about it: Heather had a killer body and knew how to have a good time. Some of the other girls were pretty cool if you told them what they wanted to hear. But Gina--well, she was shy and kind and had her act together. She was a farm girl from Crete, Nebraska, a college student, and she had a job. The kind of girl you could marry, Teena said.
And so one afternoon in late May, Teena sat on Gina's bed and waited for her to make her way back from class.
"I don't know how to say this," Teena said. "But will you marry me?"
"Yeah," Gina replied.
"He didn't have a ring yet," Gina recalled, "but he started planning our engagement party right away. He was a hopeless romantic."
The party was the biggest blowout Teena could manage. She rented three rooms at the Harvester Motel and wore a tuxedo. Only about 30 guests came, since Teena couldn't invite any friends from her past. But a few ex-girlfriends and a guy Gina had dated showed up. Teena ordered cigarettes and film from the front desk and snapped pictures all night. Pizzas were delivered, and a hot tub was filled with ice and beer.
Midway into the evening, Teena pulled Gina aside. "See, Gina, has anybody ever done anything like this for you before?" she said. She took Gina's hand and got down on bended knee: "Everybody, quiet." Teena delivered a formal proposal. "Brandon made a speech about how he was settling down," said Kendall Hawthorne, a friend Teena had met working at the state fair. "We all saw him as a ladies' man, but now he said it was time for him to stop looking. Gina was loving it."
They set May 28, 1994, one year from that night, as their wedding date.
The truth, is, Gina had some reservations about Teena. Two of Teena's exgirlfriends had told her Teena was a girl and had even shown her a yearbook photo. She confronted Teena immediately, and Teena, flustered, dug her hands into her armpits and explained: She had been raised as a girl until the eighth grade, she said. Then she had had an operation in Omaha.
Soon after, Gina noticed Teena's small breasts. Teena said they would "take a while to go away completely," and Gina remained credulous.
"Of course it bothered me, but I let it go," Gina said. "People believe what they want to when they're in love, you know? I mean, I just couldn't understand why a girl would trick you into that if she knew you liked the opposite sex."
Even more so than Heather, Gina clung to Teena, moving with her into a house shared by two gay men in their late 20s. Teena didn't have many belongings but always carried a faded photo of her father at the age of 18. "He loved to compare that picture to himself," Gina said. "They did look a lot alike."
Such pathos swelled in Teena's psyche, such fear of rejection, that she continued her life of petty crime. She forged checks to buy groceries rather than simply allow Gina to pay. When Teena was brought to court on one charge, Gina reluctantly posted the $345 bail. Driving Teena home, Gina was livid. She had seen the arrest summons. What was with this "Teena Renee" business?
Teena confessed that she hadn't yet had the operation that would make her a full-fledged male. But, she insisted, she planned to, and some steps were already under way.
"He told me how all his other girlfriends had treated him like crap when they found out," Gina said, "and it made me really angry. I started thinking, What does it matter what a person is like physically? He was a man to me, and I'd never been happier in my life: I told him to get the operation if that's what he wanted to do. I said I'd stay with him."
Next month the mastectomy, Teena promised. When a month went by, Gina inquired about it. Teena responded, "I don't have the money." When she eventually confessed that she couldn't go through with it, Gina protested.
"All you care about is what society thinks," Teena said. "You think I have to fit society's definition of a man."
"If you aren't going to do it," Gina said, "then this has to end. It would just be too hard to deal with."
In late August, Gina got her own place and asked for some time to think. Teena grew desperate, stealing Gina's Montgomery Ward credit card and using it to buy her a diamond ring. When Gina got the bill, she confronted Teena, who denied the theft. They fought all over the house, upstairs, downstairs, in the bedroom, in the kitchen. It was their only real fight.
"We're not getting married, Brandon]" Gina screamed. "What were you thinking?"
"I always told you I'd come through with the ring," Teena said and smiled weakly. The two girls erupted in laughter. But it was too late.
Teena felt she had come so close to succeeding with Gina. It was like high school, the Army, old girlfriends all over again: She had come this close to what she wanted. She was devastated and began calling Gina and showing up at her apartment at all hours. Sometimes she would drop letters through Gina's mail slot. "I often think of what it would have been like if I had told you the truth from the beginning," one letter said. "Would you have stayed with me or gone away? I wanted to let you know how good I could treat you before you found out."
Gina didn't know what to do. She had been so enamored, but did this relationship make her a lesbian? She never answered Teena's letters.
It was in November, two months after Gina ended their relationship, that Teena fled Lincoln. She owed money to too many people, some of whom had threatened her physically. She didn't tell her family or Gina when she took up residence two hours away in tiny Humboldt, crashing at a farmhouse shared by two girls, friends of someone she had dated in Lincoln. The house rented for $100 a month and stood on a modest hill, shedding gray paint and fronted by a wooden step porch.
Teena didn't stay single for long. In December she began dating Lana Tisdel, whom she had met at a party in Falls City. Lana was a 19-year-old strawberry blonde who was as easily won as Teena's previous conquests. "Other guys in this town don't give a girl flowers," Lana told her friends.
For more than a week the two were inseparable, sharing a couch at Lana's house every night, watching the country music television channel all day. Lana's mother was impressed by Teena's politeness, and Lana's friends--including her former boyfriend John Lotter, 22, and Tom Nissen, 21, whom she'd also dated--got on well with Teena also.
Even within economically anemic Falls City, families such as the Tisdels, Lotters and Nissens were outcasts. Lana's mother, Linda Gutierres, supported a family of six with a $346 disability check she received monthly as the result of a stabbing by a former husband. John Lotter lived with his mother, an older brother, two sisters and three of his sister's children in a small three-bedroom house. To their peers in Falls City, they were marginalized, unpopular dropouts and derelicts.
The pokey, backwoods character of Falls City blinded Teena to the narrowmindedness she was up against there. For all their lack of sophistication, those in Teena's coterie in Lincoln were permissive people, and quite a number had had gay friends, black friends and other associations considered vagaries in parts of rural America. But Teena's friends in Falls City were a different sort entirely.
The beginning of the end came December 15, when Teena arrived at the courthouse for a hearing on a charge of alcohol possession. She handed over her fake ID, but when it was discovered that she had forged a friend's check, Teena was jailed--in a women's cell.
During Teena's eight days in jail, much of the town learned she was in a women's cell. Lana visited her several times and, naturally, received the hermaphrodite story.
Seeing Teena locked up and crying, Lana was distraught. Like the girls before her, she was confused by the issue of Teena's gender. She still cared for Teena and wanted to post her bail.
"Don't you dare," her mother said. "And don't get any ideas about letting him in this house ever again."
On December 23, Lana took a signed, blank check her father had given her for a perm and cashed it in order to post Teena's $250 bail. Because Lana was under 21, she had to find somebody else to tender the money. She asked Tom Nissen, a gaunt fellow with a sparse mustache and light brown hair. "The agreement," Nissen told me from jail, "was that Brandon was going to show her what sex he was."

Indeed, Lana's friends and family were troubled by the way Lana was still drawn to Teena. Lana's mother suggested committing her daughter to a psychiatric unit for a month "so she could drill it into her own mind that Brandon is actually a she."
Although they were roughly the same age, John Lotter and Tom Nissen had met only recently, through Lana. Tom had lived with his father in Mississippi, but at 13 moved in with his mother, Sharon, near Falls City. He had run away from home several times, and his mother sent him to Blue Valley Mental Health Center. "I said, 'This child's not right. I don't know what it is.' If he'd done something wrong, or if you were mad at him, he'd just stand and let you scream at him.
"He was never violent, except to himself. He shot himself in the shoulder and blamed someone else. If you saw him with all his clothes off, you'd think he'd been in an accident--there are scars all over his body. Three years ago he cut his arm so bad with a butcher knife they had to take him to a plastic surgeon. It was like he'd tried to saw it off."
When he was 19, Tom married Kandi Gibson, a girl he had known in high school. In 1991 Kandi gave birth to a daughter they named Tiffany. The next year Tom went to jail for arson. He had burned down a neighboring house and garage.
Tom spent nine months in jail in Lincoln. He wrote often to his mother. "He did all right when he was there," she said. "He got his GED, he was working with computers, he got counseling. He said he was sorry." Tom went back to Falls City in May 1993. Although Kandi was pregnant with their second child, Tom soon started dating Missy Gutierres, Lana Tisdel's 18-year-old aunt. Then he got involved with Lana. It was confusing, but Tom seemed happy with the arrangement.
More of a follower, Tom yearned for the acceptance of a rake like John Lotter. John was boorish, with beady eyes and a wild mane of dark hair. His kindergarten teacher remembers him biting children and calling them motherfuckers.
John was away from his family for most of his youth--in foster homes, Boys Town, even jail (for stealing a car). But in 1990, at 18, he returned to Falls City and dated Lana on and off.
Mostly it was John's temper that got him into trouble. He once ran seven guys out of Kwik Shop all by himself when they made fun of Lana's lisp. It had been years since he and Lana had gone out, but loyalty was his subscribed virtue. He told friends he would still do anything for her.
On Christmas Eve Teena was supposed to meet Lana at a party at Nissen's house, a white stucco box in the middle of Falls City. Although Teena had been out of jail for a day, Lotter and Nissen still didn't think Lana knew that Teena was a woman. Lana said they were intent on proving it to her. Nissen, in a phone interview that took place from jail nine months later, maintained that Lana should have known what was to come. Lana denied having any knowledge of what Tom and John were going to do.
At the party, Lana's eyes flitted around the living room. There were only about a dozen people there, some whiskey, some beer, a Christmas tree listing in the corner. where the hell was Brandon? She wandered toward the bathroom and found Teena, Tom and John standing next to the tub, poised for a showdown.
"Has he shown you?" John asked Lana.
"Shown me what?" She pretended not to know.
"What's in his pants," John said.

"I don't care what's in his pants]" Lana said. "It doesn't matter to me what's in his pants]"
In a single motion, Tom grabbed Teena and pulled her arms behind her back. John tugged her jeans and boxer shorts down around her ankles. Lana covered her eyes.
"Look at him," John said between gritted teeth. "Look, or Tom is gonna keep holding him like that." Lana turned her head and peeked between her fingers.
John and Tom then marched Teena out of the bathroom and held her in front of the guests.
"Yep, it's a girl," Lotter announced.
"Ain't got no thing hanging down there," Nissen said.
Soon everyone, including John and Tom, filed out of the house and went to a bar called the Oasis. Lana walked with Teena to the nearby Stephenson Hotel, where Teena telephoned her roommates in Humboldt to come get her. John and Tom showed up at the hotel and told Lana that they had run into her mother, who wanted her home. Lana told Teena she'd be back in a second. "Don't leave me" was the last thing Teena said to Lana that night. John and Tom took Teena back to Tom's house. It was now Christmas Day.

According to sources in the Richardson County Attorney's office, the following events then took place: With John Lotter looking on, Tom Nissen beat Teena. He struck her in the face, kicked her in the ribs and stomped on her back. The chief of the Falls City police, Norman Hemmerling, would later testify that Teena had a welt shaped like the sole of a boot on her back. According to Lana's friends, the two boys had told Teena that they were angry that she ripped off their friends. Lana had used her father's money to bail Teena out of jail, they said, and now Lana was in big trouble with her parents.
John and Tom forced Teena into Lotter's Ford Crown Victoria. "All three of us were in the front seat," Nissen recalled. "Brandon was between me and John. We started riding around with her, and I think John said he was going to fuck her. Then Brandon said, 'Come on, guys, it doesn't have to be like this.' The car got stuck in a ditch off the road, and I just had on my windbreaker. And when Brandon got out to help me jack up the car, he kept offering me his jacket. I said, 'No. You better keep it on.' Then me and Brandon went across the road to this building that must have been an old schoolhouse or something, looking for bricks to put under the tires to get some traction. I came back and told John I could see a yard with a light on, and I went to get this farmer to tow us out."
John Lotter concealed Teena in the backseat while Nissen and the farmer towed the car back onto the road. Nissen drove further, finally turning off behind a Hormel pig-buying station. After he cut the engine, the boys attacked Teena in the backseat of the car. She put up a struggle. "You can either have the shit beat out of you or not," Nissen told her, "and then have it happen anyway."
Then Lotter and Nissen raped Teena.
"I went first," Nissen said. "Then John. I think it just sort of happened. I'd never done it before. I don't know that it wasn't more of an ego thing. I felt like I'd been fucked. Me and Brandon had a long conversation that evening, in the bathroom. I told him, 'I don't have anything against you. If you had just been straight with me, I would have understood.' Brandon started to feed me another line how he was going to have a sex operation. John was really upset with the whole situation. Maybe he still wished he was going out with Lana."
Perhaps, for John Lotter and Tom Nissen, it was the only retribution they could exact for the embarrassment they felt in being duped by an ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend. After all, it was just before Lana met Teena that she had been sleeping with Tom. And John dated Lana for years.
At six A.M., Teena was at the Tisdels' door, barefoot and with no coat, out of breath and bleeding from her mouth. Her jeans were muddied up to the knees. Her hands were dirty. And her undershirt--she always wore an undershirt--was missing. An ambulance was called to take Teena to the hospital.
The phone rang in Tammy Brandon's apartment. She hoped it would be Teena. It was Christmas Day and she hadn't seen or heard from her sister in weeks. She didn't even know where to find her these days.
"Tammy?" Teena seemed to be hyperventilating.
"Calm down," Tammy said. "Where are you?"
Teena told Tammy about her exodus to Humboldt, about Lana, about being raped. In a way, it taxed her heart more to talk about it than to endure it.
"Do you hate me for what I am?" Teena asked. She was so ashamed, her reputation now shot to hell in the worst way she could imagine. She didn't know if she could tell her mother.
"Let me call Mom first," Tammy said.
"Tammy?"
"Yeah?"
"I didn't cry the whole time. I wasn't going to give them the satisfaction."
Charles Laux, Richardson County's sheriff, came on the case dogged by problems of his own. Laux was being investigated by the Nebraska attorney general for selling used cars without a dealer's license. A city clerk says the town had temporarily withheld two of his paychecks for inadequate service.

According to the Brandons, Laux was not much help to Teena. When he questioned Teena on the afternoon of Christmas Day, Laux reportedly asked her, "Why do you prefer females?" and "Why did you take your pants down for those boys?"
Although a report from the Falls City hospital confirmed that Teena had been raped, Laux said he found inconsistencies in her statement: Initially, she claimed to have been raped once, then said twice. And she said both John and Tom had beaten her, but then said it was just Tom. Deputy Sheriff Tom Olberding, a friend of Lotter's, saw Teena that day, too. "There was no doubt in my mind it happened," he would say the following week, "but you have to get statements from the other side. You just can't go running around arresting people."
So Olberding and Laux didn't bring John and Tom in for questioning until three days later, on December 28. The two men denied raping Teena. Tom admitted to Olberding that he had heard Teena say "Don't hurt me" when John got in the backseat of the car with her, and he conceded that "clothing was removed," according to Olberding's sworn statement. Still, no arrests were made.
JoAnn Brandon felt helpless when she heard about Teena's rape, just as she had when she learned that Teena had been molested as a child. But she also felt some relief just to hear from Teena and know that her daughter would still come to her in a time of crisis. All that week Teena called home. She had a few things in Falls City to straighten out before she could come home--the alcohol and the forgery charges--and had a court hearing on the 31st. In the meantime, Teena said, she could be reached at the farmhouse in Humboldt.
Tammy phoned the State Patrol and, a few times, called Sheriff Laux, asking why no arrests had been made. Teena wasn't safe with those boys at large, Tammy pleaded. They had told Teena they were going to silence her permanently if she talked about the rape.
Back in Falls City, Lana Tisdel's sister had fought with her boyfriend, Phillip DeVine, who was visiting from out of town. Teena had seen Phillip in Falls City on Thursday, the 30th, and suggested that he stay in the farmhouse with her and one of her roommates, Lisa Lambert, whom Phillip also knew. It would be the three of them that night, plus Lisa's nine-month-old baby, Tanner.

By Thursday, Sheriff Laux' investigators decided that they had enough information on the rape case. They put reports calling for Nissen's and Lotter's arrests on the desk of County Attorney Douglas Merz. Merz said he was in court that afternoon and that the arrests would have to wait a day.
Sometime before one A.M. on Friday, John Lotter had shown up at the house of his friend Eddie Bennett. Eddie was sitting in the living room. John went inside and stayed for less than ten minutes. He knew Eddie kept a .38 revolver in his sock drawer. On New Year's Day, Eddie would report the gun missing.
Around one A.M., John and Tom Nissen arrived at Lana Tisdel's house, staggering and slurring their words. John was wearing gloves, which he didn't normally do. Tom asked Lana's mother where Teena was. "I think she's out in Humboldt," came the reply.
"I'm going to put a knife in my hand and kill somebody," he said to Lana's sister. Then he looked at Lana and added, "And you're next." Lana would later say that she didn't think Lotter was serious. It didn't occur to her to call the farmhouse in Humboldt and warn Teena, or to phone the cops.

Lotter and Nissen drove to Humboldt. "Bsically, we said 'Let's go scare the shit out of them,'" Nissen said, describing the murders. "From the way events took place, I would say John probably had a plan. There wasn't much conversation." Nissen said the murders took him by surprise, that he and John had not discussed them beforehand. "This is the way it went, OK? John kicked in the door and we entered the residence. I found a light in the living room and turned it on. We entered Lisa Lambert's bedroom. Lisa had picked up the phone and was trying to call someone. John took the phone out of her hand and hung it up.
"There was a waterbed in Lisa's bedroom. Brandon was on the floor at the end of the bed, covered by a blanket, hiding. I pulled Brandon off the floor and sat on the edge of the bed. Lisa said to me, 'Tom, don't let him hurt me,' because John had the gun. I was kind of surprised when she said my name. I'd never met her but she knew me, because she had seen me around, I guess.
"I don't recall even a whimper from Brandon. Brandon was shot then. Both times. I don't know how to put it in words, to be honest with you," Nissen said. "If I had known that they were going to be killed, I think I would have run the car off the road into a telephone pole on the way there, killed us instead. But I couldn't have just turned back. It was kind of a matter of pride."
When asked about the knife that had punctured Teena's liver, and her skull being crushed, Nissen replied: "The report that her skull was crushed, that was caused by a bullet entering her head," he said. "The stabbing, well, that was me. It just kind of happened all so fast. I couldn't tell if she was already dead]. I honestly don't know. Were you ever caught up in a moment before?"
Nissen said that after Lotter fired the gun, Lisa's baby began to cry. "So I picked him up, trying to get him to calm down. And she said, 'Tom, will you give me my baby?' And I said, 'Yeah,' and gave it to her. Then the gun was fired again. At Lisa. It hit her between the stomach and the chest, and she bled a lot. Then I remember I looked at John, and I didn't feel drunk anymore. I didn't say anything to him. Then Lisa said to me, 'Take my baby. Promise he won't be hurt.' So I put him back in the baby bed, gave him a bottle. Then Lisa was hit in the eye.
"So then I left the room and found Phillip in another bedroom, and he started to holler, 'I didn't see nothing. I won't tell nobody. Can't we work this out?' At that point it was obvious no one was going to walk out of there. And we went into the living room and Phillip sat down on the couch. Then the gun was fired, twice.
"I thought about my kids and my wife. I do believe that if I had to do it over again, I would have stood in front of Lisa and taken her bullet. Brandon didn't deserve to die either. But I don't feel real guilty about killing her. I think she probably would have been killed by someone anyway. I've met people in prison who knew her in Lincoln. She had people out to get her. People said they knew people that wanted to do that to her too. But when I think about stabbing her, it pretty much does me in. With Phillip, I'd say I'm sorry he's gone. I feel pretty bad about just being involved in it. My biggest problem is with Lisa. She was a mother. I think about her little boy growing up. Someday he will find out that somebody murdered his mom. I'd imagine it could cause quite a bit of anger, growing up without a mom. Anger will make a person do terrible things. He could take some of the same paths I did. And I'd hate to see someone end up like me because of something I took part in."
The three bodies were discovered several hours later, on the morning of December 31, by Lisa's mother, who had worried when she heard that Lisa had not shown up for work. It was three years to the day since Teena's sweet, nervous date at Holiday Skate World, her very first appearance as a boy.
At five P.M. on December 31, local police pulled up to Tom Nissen's house and found Tom and John Lotter in the front room, playing cards. Eddie Bennett's gun and a folding knife were found the next day on the frozen Nemaha River just off Highway 73. Ballistics tests proved that the bullets used in the murders came from the gun.
Lotter was charged with murder, kidnapping and sexual assault and Nissen was charged with murder, kidnapping and aiding and abetting the assault. Both men are awaiting trials in the early months of 1995. If found guilty, both could face the death penalty. The two were being held at the same prison in Lincoln, though they were not allowed to see or speak with each other. Both have pleaded not guilty in pretrial hearings. (Nissen's words here mark the first public statement about the case from either man; Lotter did not respond to requests for an interview.) Nissen said his lawyer is encouraging him to testify against Lotter and cop a plea. After Lotter was moved to a higher-security prison for tearing the plumbing from his cell wall, locals began to speculate that he may try to get himself acquitted on some sort of insanity plea.
Although County Attorney Merz was initially slated to prosecute Lotter and Nissen, a judge has stepped in and appointed an independent prosecutor from Lincoln to help Merz. The Brandon family is in the process of filing a wrongful-death suit against Laux and Richardson County. They hope the state will determine whether Lana had any complicity in Teena's rape and murder. Even though Lana had helped her after the rape, Teena told her mother she was afraid of Lana. The Brandons were shocked to see Lana and her mother on A Current Affair. Michelle Lotter--John's sister and Lana's best friend--even accompanied the Tisdels on The Maury Povich Show. At the March arraignments for Lotter, the Tisdels talked and joked with him from the courtroom seats. For some time after his arrest, Tom Nissen continued his romantic involvement with Lana's aunt Missy.
Teena was buried in her favorite clothes--a black rugby shirt, matching cowboy hat and cowboy boots--beside her father, Patrick Brandon, at Lincoln Memorial Park Cemetery. At her funeral, mourners who knew her as Teena sat mostly on the left-hand side of the aisle. Those who knew her as a boy sat on the right. Today, dozens of girls who knew or dated Teena leave flowers and notes at her grave.
After the funeral, Teena's former fiancee, Gina Bartu, followed Lana Tisdel's car to a Long John Silver's. Something had been on her mind since she had learned of Teena's death.
"Did Brandon ever tell you about his friends in Lincoln?" Gina asked Lana.
"Not really," Lana said, "except for this one girl and how much that he still loved her."
Gina drove away feeling both better and worse than she ever had in her entire life. If only she had stayed with Teena, she thought, Teena wouldn't have gone to Humboldt and wouldn't have been raped and murdered.

Gina tried dating a man, but he balked when he learned about Teena. He said it made him "uncomfortable." Sometimes Gina fantasizes about moving away and starting over.
"I always hoped that if he'd work things out for himself," Gina said, "maybe someday we could still get married. The relationship was way too good to be true. But I don't regret one bit of it. He made me fall in love with him on the inside."

Below for those who never saw the video of rape of Teena with real voice

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