In March of 1995, Haddon Heights, New Jersey was rocked by a double murder and a 14 hour long armed standoff when Leslie Ann Nelson killed two law enforcement officers who came to her home to serve a search warrant for illegal weapons. The news accounts from then until now have referred to Ms. Nelson as a "transsexual." While it is true that she had sex reassignment surgery in May of 1992, according to two mental health professionals who evaluated her, at the request of her defense team, Nelson should have never had SRS. She is a transvestite, not a transsexual. A TV with other issues.
How did Leslie Ann Nelson become a killer? Dr. Carol Cobb Nettleton (one of the therapists who evaluated Nelson) said Nelson was "depressed and suicidal" because of a lifetime of turmoil caused by her gender identity issues. Court testimony also revealed that Leslie Nelson hated and was ashamed of her penis. This hatred was not related to Nelson's gender identity issues but developed over years because of voiding problems.
The young Nelson was a bedwetter well into his teens and his whole family made fun of him on an almost daily basis. The family did not seek medical help for the bedwetting problem. This lead to Nelson having a severe psychological problem with urinating in public restrooms. It became impossible for the young Nelson to use a urinal. When it became apparent that the only way the boy would urinate was if he was sitting in a locked stall (and even then it was very difficult), Nelson's father would call him a little girl and taunt him with the name "Madeline." Because he could not use public restrooms his social and work life were extremely restricted. Is it any wonder that Nelson came to despise the penis that failed him on a regular basis?
Remember, Nelson is also a transvestite. What can you do when your male nature betrays you? Leslie Ann Nelson became more and more convinced that the female gender was the place to be. Being feminine, acting like a girl, these things brought her escape from the torture of having a penis that was an embarrassment. When she went to visit Dr. Biber for the initial SRS consultation, she said she wanted "to put her thing on the chopping block." Putting your thing on the block is only one aspect of changing your gender. To Nelson it was the most important item.
A major clue that Nelson was not a transsexual came when she began to live fulltime as a female. She became more emotionally disturbed. The Real Life Test is a critical time of problem solving and for the true transsexual, as challenging as it is, it leads to less emotional problems--not more.
Many members of the transgender community deal with their gender issues by viewing them as a "gender journey." By putting one foot in front of the other and moving through each day one at a time many, many people have found resolution to their gender conflicts and lived healthy, productive lives. Leslie Ann Nelson's gender journey ended with a sentence of death in the murder of one of the officers and a sentence of thirty years to life for the other killing. An appeal is automatic in New Jersey but the best she can hope for is life in prison.
Nelson's is not the only ruined life in this sad story. Two wives will never see their husbands again. The officer's children will never see their fathers again. An officer she only wounded, whose life was saved when Nelson's mother shielded him with her own body, will never see his brother (one of the slain officers) again and his career as a police officer is over due to the extent of his wounds. Leslie Nelson will either be executed or in prison for life and her mother may never see her again. How did this happen? Where were the HBIGDA's Standards of Care?
Leslie Nelson started her journey to SRS by seeing a therapist. So far so good. But, that therapist found she had mental illness and expressed doubts about Nelson's transsexuality. Nelson visited the now defunct South Jersey Chapter of Renaissance. She made the acquaintance of other individuals who considered themselves to be transsexual, individuals who were proceeding with their own self-treatment with the assistance of unethical physicians. Physicians who did not care about Nelson's penis hatred and voiding issues. Through her "TS" friends, she found a medical doctor who removed her testicles and began to administer female hormones. She also found a psychiatrist who wrote her the all important letter. The letter which was sent to Dr. Biber's clinic and got her an appointment in Trinidad, Colorado.
During her first visit to Trinidad Nelson developed a fascination with guns. While in Colorado to visit Dr. Biber, she went to a gun shop and bought a Browning pistol using the money for her initial consult. That pistol became a replacement for the penis that never worked, according to the therapists' testimony. Later, after Nelson returned from surgery, she would calm herself by cleaning and stroking the pistol up to ten times a day. She painted the pistol six different times, in different colors to increase it's erotic value.
Nelson's first therapist attempted to inform Dr. Biber that Nelson was not a suitable candidate for SRS, but the warning was ignored. Clearly Dr. Biber, Nelson's psychiatrist, and the M.D. who did the orchidectomy, all chose, for whatever reason, to ignore the Standards of Care. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Nelson's attorneys said, "her disappointment became abject when she realized the surgery had left her unable to achieve sexual satisfaction and to live as a fulltime woman." The Standards of Care where developed to avoid tragedies like that of Leslie Ann Nelson. Perhaps if they had been followed Leslie Ann Nelson would still be on her gender journey, two police officers would still be alive, families would not have been devastated and there would be no need to write this editorial. The Nelson story is the worst case scenario. It's the worst example of what can happen when a transvestite lets his dreams become compulsions while other life-problems are ignored. It's the worst example of a transgender support group failing to provide education and options. The results of a mistake like Leslie Ann Nelson's may not be as dramatic for most, but too many lives are changed in a negative way when people ignore the Standards of Care.
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