Killing for the sport of it
Did transgender woman Donna Perry murder three prostitutes because she was jealous that they could conceive..?
In the space of four months in 1990, the bodies of three women were found dumped on the banks of a river. The killing of 26-year-old Yolanda Sapp, 34-year-old Nickie Lowe, and 38-yearold Kathleen Brisbois was the work of one person with an axe to grind.
Each of them was found partially exposed and shot, their bodies discarded casually in the same area of Spokane, Washington. All three were prostitutes.
With a serial killer on the loose, police scrambled to find the murderer, but all their leads led to dead ends.
The case went cold – and, for years, the women’s families were left grieving.
Meanwhile, 38-year-old Donna Perry was busily transforming her life – and her body. Born Douglas Perry, she’d spent years longing to be female.
Finally, in 2000, she flew to Thailand to undergo gender-- reassignment surgery.
Her hair was already long, but she now had breasts and dressed in women’s clothes.
Denial
What had driven Donna’s surgery? Was it purely a desire to be female, or part of an elaborate disguise to conceal a dark past..?
In 2012, Perry was convicted of being a felon in charge of a firearm.
As part of the investigation, her DNA profile was entered into a national database – and came back as a match to DNA linked to the murder victims in Spokane more than two decades earlier.
The cold case was reopened. Detectives spent hours interviewing Donna, who denied knowing anything about the killings.
But, when they suggested that Douglas Perry was responsible, her response was alarming.
‘I don’t know if Doug did or not. It was 20 years ago, and I have no idea whether he did or
Was it part of an elaborate disguise to conceal a dark past?
didn’t,’ she said.
Donna went on to claim she’d transitioned to female to stop the violent tendencies she’d had as Douglas.
‘I’m not going to admit I killed anybody, I didn’t. Donna has killed nobody,’ she added.
But, in court, prosecutors suggested Perry had surgery as part of a plan to stop her ever being caught for the slayings.
Life in prison
In June this year, the court heard more about the evidence stacked against Perry.
Her DNA was under the fingernail of Kathleen Brisbois, and on a blanket near Yolanda Sapp. Her fingerprint was on a bottle linked to Nickie Lowe.
The jury convicted Perry of three counts of first-degree murder, and the 65-year-old was handed three consecutive life sentences without possibility of parole.
At sentencing, Superior Court Judge Michael Price commented on what’d motivated Perry, saying, ‘This is my first case, and hopefully my last, where the murders seemingly were committed for the sport of it.’
But that wasn’t the only explanation.
A woman with whom Perry shared a cell during a prison stint back in 1998 claimed Perry confessed to killing the women because, while she couldn’t reproduce, the women had the ability to have children but were wasting it being ‘pond scum’.
Loved ones of the victims took to the stand to talk about the impact the murders had had.
One of the most poignant statements came from Yolanda Sapp’s daughter, Natasha. She was only a little girl when Perry killed her mother. In fact, so young that she has no memory of her mum – yet still feels bereft.
‘If she hadn’t been killed by a monster, then I would have a memory,’ she said. ‘I know you are supposed to forgive… but I can’t. I want justice.’
Yolanda’s sister Marika also spoke about how she and her family feared the killer would come after them in the years after the murder, when the case remained unsolved.
‘I hope you sit in your cell forever and think of the things you have done,’ she told Perry.
Kathleen Brisbois’ daughter Kaishea Kegley publicly thanked her mum for putting up a fight.
‘I want to thank my mom for scratching up the man so he could meet a real woman…’ she said. ‘I’m truly honoured and humbled to be here. I never thought this day was going to come.’
Kathleen’s friend Tabitha Mora told the court Kathleen had been planning to make a fresh start.
‘I seen Kathy a week before she got killed. She was bragging about how beautiful the kids were and how she wanted to change her life,’ she said. ‘I thank everyone who caught this monster.’
While prosecutors were pleased with the outcome of the case, Perry’s defence team said they would appeal.
Man or woman, the DNA evidence was there... She said that she’d had violent tendencies as Douglas