Death of a Two Spirit.

A Colorado town searches for answers in the senseless death of a transgendered Navajo teenager

Two framed photographs neatly flanked the carnations and roses adorning the coffin of Fred C. Martinez Jr. the day he was laid to rest in Cortez, Colo., on July 5, 2001, nearly three weeks after a savage beating ended his young life.

One photograph showed the 16-year-old Native American youth dressed as any typical high school boy might be: in a black T-shirt and with hair slickly parted on one side, an infectious smile lighting his face. The second showed Martinez with hair bobbed neatly behind his ears, left under his chin, made up as a girl.

The photography neatly sum up the two lives--both as a gay youngster and as a transgendered adolescent--Martinez tried to integrate valiantly and openly in this town of 8,000 people. But they also underscore the deep divisions that run like a fault line through this tiny frontier town located near the Navajo Nation, which has a half-million inhabitants.

In a town that is nearly 20% Native Americans, it seems residents of all ethinicities struggle to come to terms with the colliding cultures and the uneasy silence between the minorities. Not only do some residents say there is a divide between Native Americans and whites as well as gays and and straights, but some gay people say a similar chasm exists among members of their own small community. "I did not understand the gravity of [Martinez's] sense of malaise about his safety," says Alan Cook, an openly gay psychotherapist and the director of Cortez Addiction Recovery Services, who helped Martinez get counseling following a suicide attempt about six months ago. "I am a middle-class white male, and I didn't have insight into the part of the community that is young and Navajo and gay."

A complex portrait of Martinez has emerged from friends and acquaintances. Some say he identified with the Native American idea of "Two Spirit"--a homosexual, sometimes androgynous person with the spirit of both a man and a woman--which is viewed respectfully by many Native American cultures.

Martinez was over 6 feet tall, weighed about 200 pounds, and he often carried a purse and wore makeup and fingernail polish to school behavior for which administrators sometimes sent him home and for which he was frequently taunted and harassed by his peers.

But people say other students, particularly girls, adored him, and he was apparently well-supported by his family. A school counselor, Terri Helm, says Martinez had a slight learning disability and did not perform well academically, him to abandon high school in 2001, though he was trying to earn his general equivalency diploma.

Of course, none of this explains why this young person was murdered. And unfortunately, the investigation hasn't provided many answers either so far.

Many of the facts associated with Martinez's murder are still sketchy, although a few things can be pieced together from a police affidavit filed in early July. It appears that both Martinez and his alleged assailant, 18-year-old Shaun Murphy, attended the same party on June 16, following a town carnival. Though they allegedly did not know each other and left the party separately, Murphy, a resident of nearby Farmington, N.M., and two friends--who as of press time had not been implicated in the murder--later encountered Martinez while they drove past Montezuma-Cortez High School, where Martinez had been a student and which was near Martinez's home.

They offered him a ride and, after Martinez accepted, stopped at a convenience store. Murphy's two friends few minutes.

The trio then dropped Martinez off at a nearby corner, and one of the passengers, Clint Sanchez-whom police arrested several days later for possession of a gun--said, according to the police affidavit, "Do you think he thought we were gay or something?" The three then went to the apartment of the third passenger, Melissa Scharnhorst. A few moments later Murphy left the apartment to "get a joint," the affidavit states.

It is unclear what happened next, but Murphy apparently ran into Martinez again--whether by arrangement or by accident is unknown. The two had an altercation, and Murphy, who is described as being much smaller than Martinez, chased him into a desolate, rocky area called "the pits," where local teenagers frequently partied. In the darkness Martinez reportedly ran into a barbed-wire fence, slicing open his abdomen and wrists. He then ran another quarter of a mile, attempting to scale a natural stone wall to get to safety, but he was hit with a blunt object on the head, which knocked him to the ground. It is unclear if he was hit more than once, but according to the coroner's report, Martinez died of "blunt-force trauma to his head" as well as exposure.

Murphy then returned to his friend's apartment, his clothing soaked in blood, saying he had "left someone lying" in the pits, the report states.

Though Martine's mother, Pauline Mitchell, says she called the police department multiple times to report her son missing (the police department disputes this claim), his body lay for a week just a few blocks from home, at the bottom of a shallow canyon, partially obscured by bushes. By the time it was discovered by two children who were playing, his body was so decomposed that it could only be identified through dental records.

Police arrested Murphy on July 9 because, the affidavit says, he had boasted to friends that he "beat up a fag."

But then came a wrinkle in what at first appeared to be an open-and-shut murder case that had hate as its motive: Murphy's mother, Angel Tacoronte, acknowledged that she herself is a lesbian. "I am [a lesbian], and [Murphy] has uncles and stuff that are gay," she tells The Advocate. "It runs in the family, and he is used to it." Tacoronte added that she taught tolerance in her home and that she supports her son. "It's my son that has to deal with this, and we have to stand behind him," she says.

At press time questions remained about how the case will be prosecuted. Colorado activists want to see the murder treated as a hate crime, though state law does not include sexual orientation as a category in its current bias-crime statute, called the Ethnic Intimidation Act. "Everything so far leads us to believe [Martinez] was targeted for transgressing gender," says Denise de Percin, executive director for the Colorado Anti-Violence Project, based in Denver. "People who transgress gender and whose expression is not considered normal are the ones who are most often targeted for bias-motivated violence."

Statistics compiled by her group show that reports of bias-motivated crimes in Colorado increased nearly 16% in 2000 to 88 and have grown eight-fold since 1996, though the huge increase probably has more to do with growing awareness about reporting such crimes, de Percin says. (Similarly, bias crimes against those under the age of 18 increased 60% in 2000, the group reports.)

While Montezuma County district attorney Joseph W. Olt Jr. says he remains open to the idea that Martinez's murder may have been bias-motivated, he sounds somewhat circumspect. "We have an ethnic-intimidation statute, not a hate-crime statute," he says. "We are still looking at everything, and the investigation is still ongoing. We have not dropped the ball on anything."

Olt says he is seeking a second-degree murder charge against Murphy, as "it was not apparent Murphy intended to kill Martinez." Conviction on charges of second-degree murder carries a maximum penalty of 48 years, and proof of a bias crime could help ensure the maximum penalty is applied, he says.

While activists and local officials hash out their part of the drama, the more poignant aspects of the story are being dealt with by Martinez's mother. Though Mitchell asked not to be interviewed by the press, she did issue a written statement about her son and his death. "Fred was always proud to be Navajo. Fred did not struggle with who he was but was hurt because of the people who had problems with my son expressing himself honestly," she wrote. "Because he was different, his life was taken from him, and we will never know the person Fred would have become."

RELATED: Fit to print

The Cortez Journal stands its ground after catching flak for reporting Martinez's sexual orientation

Readers of the Cortez [Colo.] Journal aren't used to reading the words gay and trans-gendered in their 7,500-circulation newspaper, which comes out three times a week. So when Fred Martinez was murdered and the Journal reported his gender identity and sexual orientation along with other facts in the case, a good number of readers balked. "They really seemed to think that these were shameful things and that our reporting them would embarrass the family," managing editor Gall Binkly tells The Advocate.

Dozens of protest letters followed, with one anonymous writer referring to Martinez's identity as a "flaw" that should not be brought "out in the open." But the paper stood its ground, not only continuing to report the relevant facts in the case but publishing an editorial (written by Binkly) to make sure readers understood where the paper stood on the issue.

"Even if it turns out that [Martinez's] murder was not related to his race or sexuality, we don't regret having included such information about him in our articles, because it was an integral part of who he was," the editorial stated. "Just as we might state that a crime victim was a family man, we wrote that Martinez was gay."

The piece concluded, "Let's make one thing clear. We do not believe there is anything shameful about homosexuality or being transgendered. We do not believe, as our anonymous letter writer does, that it is a flaw. If Fred Martinez didn't try to hide the fact that he was gay, why should we? And as long as people believe homosexuality is a dark secret to be concealed at all costs, how will gays ever come to be fully accepted into society?"

Since publishing the editorial July 10, Binkly says the flow of negative letters has been replaced for the most part by positive ones--many of them from gay and lesbian people from outside Cortez who read the piece on the Internet. But even these letters make Binkly a bit uncomfortable. "it doesn't seem right that people should have to be grateful for a simple editorial that just points out the obvious," she says. "Things just shouldn't be that way." --Jon Barrett

Find the full text of the Cortez Journal editorial at www.advocate.com

Quittner writes for a number of other publications, including Business Week.