Two transgender women murdered in one week

by Anthony Glassman

Cleveland--The murder of two transgender women in less than two days has the LGBT community looking for answers that do not seem to be coming.

The first murder was that of Betty Skinner, a 52-year-old woman who lived in a senior apartment building in Old Brooklyn. She was disabled, and found dead in her bed in the morning of Thursday, December 5.

She had a home health care worker who had been with her Wednesday evening. When the woman returned the next morning, Skinner was dead, apparently beaten. Her body showed head injuries.

Police had made no arrests by press time, but transgender activist Jacob Nash, who is organizing a community meeting on December 15 to discuss the murders, said, ?They are looking at somebody.?

Skinner?s health care worker, who visited her regularly, left at 10 pm on Wednesday night, returning 12 hours later to find her dead.

Skinner was born Brian, but had her name legally changed in 2002.

The other victim, Brittany-Nicole Kidd-Stergis, was found in her car, parked on West 25th Street in the Lakeview Terrace housing project on December 6. She had been shot in the head.

She was born Laron Kidd, and she was 22 years old. Stergis was charged twice for robbery in 2010, and in 2012 faced charges for robbery, misuse of credit cards and identity theft. In the most recent case, she was put on probation.

Despite her troubled past, however, Nash is worried about the latest murder of a transgender person in Cleveland.

?It doesn?t matter what she?s done,? he said. ?She didn?t deserve to die like that. It?s absolutely not acceptable.?

Stergis was the third high-profile murder of a transgender person in the Cleveland area this year. CeCe Dove was brutally slain in Olmsted Township in January, and her killer, Andrey Bridges, was sentenced to life in prison for her murder last month.

These last two murders come just eight months before the Cleveland-Akron metroplex hosts the Gay Games, bringing LGBT athletes from across the globe, along with the attention of the planet, to northeast Ohio.

?If local officials are not paying attention to what?s happening in the LGBT community, the rest of the world is,? Nash noted.

The LGBTQ Community Action Anti-Violence Meeting will be held on Sunday, December 15 at 3 pm. The location is still being decided upon, as the first option was not available due to a previously scheduled event. For more information, e‑mail Jacob Nash at transactivist@sbcglobal.net.