In 2000, actress Hilary Swank won an Oscar for her role as real-life transgender murder victim Brandon Teena. Here, we reveal how vile John Lotter still sits on Death Row in Nebraska for a killing spree which killed not only Brandon but also two of his fr
JOHN Lotter says he’s too stupid to be executed.
In a series of appeals against his death sentence, the convicted murderer said he believes executing him would be ‘unconstitutional’ because, intellectually speaking, he functions as an infant.
Yet what Lotter and accomplice Tom Nissen perpetrated in December 1993 was far from child’s play.
The pair learned that their friend Brandon Teena, 21, had actually been born a woman – and he still possessed the breasts and female genitalia he’d tried so hard to hide.
Disgusted by what they had found out, Lotter and Nissen kidnapped and raped
VICTIMS: Lisa Lambert and Phillip DeVine
TRAGIC TALE: Teena became Brandon – but all hell broke loose when his secret got out
Brandon before ordering him to keep quiet.
Brandon, though, defied their hatefilled orders and went to the police.
What happened next, however, exposed a harmful underbelly of prejudice and ignorance from those in authority.
Nissen and Lotter, 22, were questioned about the rape but no charges were brought due to a ‘lack of evidence’.
Brandon’s mother, JoAnn Brandon, later successfully sued Richardson County police for failing to prevent her son’s death.
Sheriff Charles Laux was even found to
OSCAR ROLE: Hilary Swank played Brandon in have referred to Brandon as than ‘he’.
Three days after that initial sexual assault, Lotter and Nissen hunted down Brandon before shooting and stabbing him to death along with two friends who had been protecting him – Lisa Marie Lambert, 24, and Phillip DeVine, 19.
After the murderers were arrested, Nissen turned on Lotter and testified in court that he had been the killer and antagonist.
Nissen scored a reduced sentence of life in prison as Lotter was handed a death sentence in February 1996.
Lotter, now 48, protests his innocence to this day, pointing the finger right back at Nissen.
In a recent TV interview, Lotter moaned about his life while refusing to take responsibility for his actions.
He said: “It’s pretty boring. What do I miss the most about the outside? Everything.
“There’s not just one thing. Family, of course. I can have communication with them, but it’s not the same. And I don’t get to see all of them.
“Everyone has the will to live. I’m going to fight with every last breath I have to prove my innocence.”
JoAnn Brandon, meanwhile, is still consumed by grief and haunted by images of seeing son Brandon’s
ACCOMPLICE: Nissen and Lotter blamed each other ‘it’, rather battered body funeral.
She said: “When I touched the head, I couldn’t touch anywhere there wasn’t a bump.”
After winning her claim against the police department who did so little to protect Brandon, she said: “I’m so happy today. I’ll sleep better knowing that we have found some justice.
“Because of this case, fewer parents will find their kids abused and exposed to danger by law enforcement officials.”
Brandon was born Teena Renae Brandon and grew up in a mobile home in Lincoln, Nebraska.
When her father Patrick died in a car accident when she was just eight months old, it was left to JoAnn to bring up Teena and at his her older sister, Tammy.
As young children, both Teena and Tammy were sexually abused by their uncle.
As far as anyone can remember, Teena was always a ‘tomboy’.
And when she reached her teens, she began identifying as a male, calling herself Billy at one stage.
Mum JoAnn, however, did not find it easy to cope with recognising her daughter as a male.
She once said: “I wouldn’t play the game. If someone called here asking for Billy, I would say, ‘There’s no Billy here’.
“I wouldn’t refer to her as something she wasn’t.”
Teena, however, was starting to find her true self. She even enjoyed several relationships