The
last thing the friends of Nathan Vickers saw him was right in front of this donut shop
this donut shop is kind of a meeting place for most of the black transgender
prostitutes in Hollywood this is a Santa Monica and Highland a lot of folks
would congregate here they'd meet up here they kind of figure out what
they were gonna do for the night on November 17th the last the friends of
his saw him he was waving goodbye saying he'd be back in about an hour he's
going over to Lexington Street try to pick up a client or two
Hollywood officers responded to an ambulance shooting at this location
upon arrival they found the victim on the ground unconscious not breathing
suffering from a gunshot wound in the chest Hollywood homicide responded set
up a crime scene and they're now investigating we have a male no
further left the scene it looks like a female transgender at this time and
that's all we have on her I was working the next morning at the LA Times when I
got a report very early in the morning about 5 30 from the LAPD that there had
been a murder over on Lexington looked like a transgender prostitute had been
killed we're very attuned to that kind of stuff because oftentimes transgender
folks in general are targets of hate crimes and and robberies and beatings
and so I spent most of the day trying to figure out what was going on as I was
just walking up and down the street talking to folks I began to hear the
beginnings of the story who will later take me through most of transgender
Hollywood the history of it what had taken place the mass immigration of
Latina transgenders to this area and of course the the effect of the Internet
on this entire world that had existed in Hollywood probably since the 50s
it was reported that Chastity was killed while being a sex worker and she was
shot by a person on a bicycle and after shooting that individual that was
reported that the same suspect went to West Hollywood and attempted to rob another transgender person
what we do know is that he was standing at the corner of Lexington and Gower on
November 17th 2011 just before 10 p.m. a gunshot was heard in the area and
Nathan was found dead on the street media covered this murder with great
intensity and that led to the identification of a witness who was
able to provide a suspect description only as a black male on a bicycle
approximately 30 20 to 30 minutes later in the evening a few blocks away which
happened to be in Los Angeles County Sheriff's jurisdiction another incident
was a link to the murder that incident involved an attempted robbery with
shots fired of another person who happened to be a transgender female as I
got into this story I began to really try to find out as much as I could about
Nathan Vickers Nathan Vickers had grown up in East Palo Alto pretty tough town
his friends knew him as gay very early on although his mother did not he was a
guy who was very very funny talkative very loyal but not terribly educated he
gets out of high school and he's a gay man trying to find work for a while he
works in hotels he works at restaurants he works in Las Vegas for a while but
then along comes the Great Recession and the Great Recession really takes the
air out of his sales he cannot find work he's living in East Palo Alto again
he's back home with his mom that living with then with with some roommates in
in Oakland back and forth trying to find a way cannot find work at all at some
point there without finding straight work he began he enters the the the world
of cross-dressers and transgender hooking up in Oakland what he exactly
intended I don't think anybody really knows does he intend to be to become a
transgender woman for the and for the rest of his life did he just try to use
it as a way of finding work I don't know I thought this was kind of one of the
interesting mysteries of this of this story Sam Kenyon is when I first met
him he's a reporter of the Los Angeles Times he contacted me asking me if I
would accompany him on Santa Monica Boulevard to see if we can recover some
information about the murder of Chastity so he and I went in his car and we
drove around several areas in Santa Monica and met with Amber and she was
the one who sat down with us in Jambajus and gave us information what she knew
Sam actually I got in contact with him through Troy and he wanted to do an
interview for the LA Times and we did that interview I was but we did the
interview and I met Chastity out here on Santa Monica Boulevard actually and
McCat in at the village I met her she came out here with her cousin from the
Bay Area she was a pretty nice girl she never got into it with anybody never
argued she seemed pretty nice we helped each other with like food money every
now and then if she didn't have any money I'd give her some money if I didn't
have any money she would give me some money we were hungry we would take each
other out to eat I believe that when she came to Hollywood she found like a
place where she could be accepted for who she really wanted to be when I met
her she was a girl I never seen her as a boy so I would consider her transgender
I know that that was like a goal that she was trying to reach so I don't know
her family didn't know about it I actually seen her right in front of
Donutime and like usually like I said she was really quiet and really didn't
hang out with anybody but that night she was like really happy for some reason
she was like full of like life spirit her spirits were really high and she walked
that to me and a couple of my friends and she told us that she wanted to take
us to where she was staying in Watts and like a couple of hours later the police
came by and said that there was a murder off of Lexington and Gower and then the
next day the detectives had like her mugshot and they were showing us and
they were telling us exactly what it was that got murdered this strip mall at
Highland and Santa Monica this where the Donutime Donut Shop was in the
geography of Santa Monica Boulevard the hangout for black transgender hookers
they would usually hang out in front here hang out over there a lot of them
would sleep from time to time and what used to be that blackened building back
there used to be a pornographic bookstore had little video booths where
you can watch porno films the guys would sleep in those in those cubicles
there a lot or they'd sleep in bushes over farther down Santa Monica or up on
Highland this was the meeting place they would meet each other here they would
get to know each other here a lot of them of course went by nicknames no one
really knew each other by by the names that their own families knew them the
next day was when they actually passed out the flyers with her mugshot and stuff
on it so they were out here like the whole night the night that she got
murdered but they were giving us her government name and nobody really knew
who that was so it was kind of confusing people and nobody really
understood or knew who they were talking about and so they handed out the
mugshot from that point on flyers were made of chastity and I went out in the
community posting them in businesses trying to get information on the suspect
the western bandit is the suspect the western bandit has been linked to in
total 20 crimes one of those Nathan's murder the 19 others in the majority are
robberies or attempted robberies some of them just shootings this individual is
acted in a very dangerous manner very reckless oftentimes during the robberies
he's not giving the victim enough time to even provide them with what he's
demanding he's shooting luckily no others have been killed during these
incidents but there's been a lot of people injured he's a very dangerous
individual this place was overwhelmed in LAPD patrol cars they came from every
direction and inundated the area and what they wanted to do was pass around a
picture of Nathan Vickers to all the folks that they didn't want anybody
running off because they knew it was gonna be a very dicey case he was a
transgender hooker could be from anywhere could be anybody and they
figured the only place the closest place they knew to check was donut time
donut shop which was what big hangout for black transgender hookers on Santa
Monica Boulevard
few blocks from here is Lexington Avenue Lexington Avenue has a kind of a
storied history in the history of transgender hooking in Hollywood for a
long time through the 80s and 90s it was this huge huge hooking place where I
was like dozens and dozens of transgender hookers all day long all
night long they would be like clumps and you have like the full ecosystem of
transgender hooking there you'd have the most dazzling looking women down to
folks who guys who really weren't passing for women at all the only hooking
that really takes place on Lexington now is during the day some Latina hookers
walking their dogs they all walk dogs that's kind of like the sign up and down
Lexington during the day at night it's a place for only the homeliest the
transgender hookers who really don't look like women at all and whose
whose looks would not bear scrutiny under under the lights of Santa Monica
Boulevard
yeah I heard it was a good shot just like that
I never do nothing wrong I think so I'm not an angel neither right but I'm not
bored about it to turn around and have everybody in the chat because I'm not
stupid about it I always think about it but I like that
not from Mexico City
I feel for my life it's a lot harder to live like that more harder than anybody's life
yeah because I've been like this for my life so it's sound to thinking about it
how hard is this life it's really really hard like like I cannot even I cannot
even believe myself I leave all these years like that you know it's really
hard really hard people you know and I got the most people to me good they're
always something something is making them comfortable because you know you're
different but no matter how you beautiful how you female wherever you look you
know something is making them comfortable everywhere you go and especially
me because I've been here I've been here in California for too many years and I
be all my life what is this all I got by myself and nobody helped me maybe stay
nobody I would leave them like this I had to be and something happened to me
right now that nobody know nothing me because I'm living my family nothing
like that it kind of sucks because like it seems like when a transgender person
dies in Hollywood like nothing ever really happens and like they forget
that there's people that still care about us and the people that are still out
here so it was difficult doing this particular fundraiser because she was
African-American and it's sad to say that the city of Los Angeles was not on
fire they were not on fire because her hair or her wig her wig wasn't straight
enough you know her eyes was in light enough her skin color wasn't brown
enough so the city really wasn't on fire so when I went to the transgender day
of remembrance where they remember those that died of hate crimes when I went to
take the stage they told me no and it really disturbed me because that was
the time when we could have raised money for the family but they told me no so
then about a week or so later we had a visual so we totaled about $500 to give
to the family but that was with effort and typically speaking at Chastity was
a different race we were raised money at that transgender day of remembrance and
we would have got more than $500 for that family how upsetting is that
as I began to interview people who knew him both people here and people up in
East Palo Alto where he was originally from and at each spot you would get a
different picture of who Nathan Vickers was some people that like folks down
here didn't even know him as Nathan they know him as they knew her as Cassidy
Vickers the friends up in Palo Alto in Oakland knew him as Nathan Vickers
someone that they swore would never cross dress and was not a transgender
person and never wanted surgery but simply was was that if he was cross
dressing it was entirely an economic choice that he had no other opportunity
to make money and this was this was his way of making money I spoke with his
mother who knew nothing about this world and his her son's involvement in it
she just thought he was a gay man who had trouble finding work and really didn't
know anything about his life on the street so at each place she found a
different idea of who this guy was and what he was trying to become or who he
who he had had been and it was a very complicated thing and I found he had
three nicknames he had two Facebook accounts he had IDs from I think four
three or four different cities it was like you're trying to find this ghost
this shadow you didn't really know who he was he may not actually in fact have
known who he was it was a was a classic Hollywood story I thought people come
here have been coming here to become stars for for decades now mostly that's
a Hollywood story that ends badly not like the Hollywood movies you know this
Holly the classic Hollywood story does not end well it ends up someone working
tables and alcoholic trying to find some kind of path to stardom they end up on
the streets this was a little bit like that it was a story about a guy who came
here looking to be something else because what was happening for him up
north in Northern California wasn't working for him and he gravitated
towards cross-dressing cross transgender hooking and ended up dead on the
street investigated by police officers who had no idea who he was people
surrounded by people who had no idea who who he was and be friended on the
street in front of this donut shop right here by people who never knew his real
name it's a very sad story some of these people coming out in hopes of
becoming actors models anything like that things don't come easy in life
whether you're hoping that something magically is gonna happen when you come
out to Hollywood and ending up on the streets addicted to drugs very sad
stories out there I think people have a misconception about Hollywood they think
Hollywood they think lights camera action glitz glamour and what they
really don't know it's not like a place to come and live out your dreams or
anything they don't know the actual truth about Hollywood which is that it's a
pretty dangerous place it's infested with drugs prostitution gangs those are
things that we don't see on TV or in the movies so I think that's why these
people are misled but I mean a lot of bad things happen a lot of people die
out here nobody really sees this stuff because it never gets too public it's
probably played on the news once or twice and then it's a dead issue after
that and there's really no justice or anything for anybody I've lost a lot of
friends out here I've almost lost my life out here a couple of times and it's
just a scary place and I don't recommend it for anybody
