Echoes of Brandon Teena. (Crime).

Seventeen-year-old Gwen Araujo never returned home from a party in Newark, Calif., October 3. Her body was found two weeks later in a shallow grave 100 miles away. Police say Gwen (whose legal name was Eddie) had been beaten and strangled by three men who had just had sex with her and were surprised to learn that she was in fact biologically male.

The events were chillingly similar to the death of two other transgendered young people: In January 1994, Brandon Teena was attacked and killed after it was revealed at a party that he was a biological female, and in June 2001, Fred C. Martinez Jr., a 16-year-old gay Navajo boy who had lived as a girl, was beaten to death and left in a shallow grave outside Cortez, Colo. "These incidents underscore just how much transgendered kids are at risk for violence," said Jim Weston of the Billy DeFrank Gay and Lesbian Center in San Jose, Calif. "A lot of people--even within the gay community--don't understand transgender issues. Young transgendered people are keenly aware of that. They're extremely isolated, which puts them at greater risk for dangerous situations."

The three men accused of Araujo's murder also face hate-crime charges in connection with the killing. The charges will add up to four years to their prison sentences if they are found guilty.

Araujo's mother, Sylvia Guerrero, said her child was to be buried In make-up and women's clothes. The gravestone will be engraved with the name Gwen. "Eddie was different, and people were mean to him," she said. "He was born this way. He always felt like a girl. But he was my baby."