The female-impersonators /

by Ralph Werther

II. Z Mystery Baffles Inquiry at Every Angle.

(Much condensed, and slightly edited for diction, by author of The Female-Impersonators, from article in a New York daily.)

NO PROOF OF SUICIDE AND NO MOTIVE FOR MURDER FOUND IN CASE OF YOUTH STRANGLED ABOARD HIS OWN POWER YACHT—FRIENDS INSIST DEATH WAS AN ASSASSIN’S WORK—DRESSING OF THE BODY IN WOMAN’S CLOTHING FURNISHES NO CLUES TO FAMILY OR POLICE—FULL DETAILS FOR STUDENTS OF CRIME TO STUDY

After two weeks of many-sided investigation, the death of Z remains as great a mystery as on the evening of [date omitted by author of The Female-Impersonators] when his mother discovered him strangled aboard his power yacht in New York Harbor dressed in woman’s apparel.

“No reason for suicide and no motive for murder—no proof of suicide, no positive evidence of murder.” Such is the conclusion reached by the police, private investigators employed by Z’s family, and by newspaper reporters who have worked on the baffling case unique for its mass of contradictory theories and circumstances.

|A Psychopathic Individuality.| [And to the present writer, himself an androgyne and instinctive cross-dresser, the strongest of reasons for suicide and the strongest of motives for murder! Androgynes, because so terribly misjudged by their associates, are the most melancholy and prone to suicide of any class of mankind. Moreover, they are often murdered on the strong motive of intense loathing felt by prudes ignorant of abnormal psychology, in whose eyes the androgyne is a “sodomite,” with all the terrible, though false, connotation of that term. Such prudes believe themselves mandatories of society to rid the world of the “monster.” The present writer did some detective work in this case “on his own hook.” He ascertained that in the circle of those who knew Z by sight but were not personal friends, he had the reputation of being a fellator. I interviewed several of this circle, but did not dare thrust myself into that of Z’s close friends.]

The view of the police generally is that the death was clearly suicide. But as to how the suicide was accomplished, police officers hold theories no two of which agree.

Family Sure Z Was Murdered

Z’s family, his closest chum, and his friends generally, maintained from the first, and still believe, that Z was murdered aboard the yacht by an assassin who secreted himself in one of the cabins and afterwards escaped in a fashion equally mysterious.

The fact that young Z wore woman’s clothing is to the police the strongest evidence of suicide and supplies to them evidence of a psychopathic individuality. [That fact is to myself the strongest evidence of murder since I have repeatedly witnessed the intense revulsion of prudish bigots at any cross-sex phenomenon, and have been myself half-murdered solely on this incentive.]

Families Ignorant of Bisexual Members.

Opposed to this is the most positive assertion from Z’s family and friends: (1) That he was a normal boy in every respect. [In nearly every case of a cultured androgyne in the past, his family have never suspected anything because of the veil of silence that the deluded public has insisted be thrown over the phenomenon of androgynism and the consequent absolute ignorance of the truth about this phenomenon on the part of the entire Overworld excepting a handful of sexologists. Just to throw their associates off the scent, some cultured androgynes purposely do some courting of females, and have even contracted a marriage (of course, Platonic) as mentioned by Phyllis in the last chapter of Part Five. Moreover, some androgynes are psychic hermaphrodites and capable of sincerity in courting a girl, while at the same time Nature insists on occasional female-impersonation sprees. Z might have been a psychic hermaphrodite.]

(2) That he had never shown any suicidal tendencies. [Readers of my Autobiography of an Androgyne know that I probably showed more suicidal tendencies than almost any one else who has failed to carry them out; yet I always hid them absolutely from my family and every-day associates. Androgynes, because they do not want their friends to become aware of the cause of their melancholia (fearing it would alienate them, as at present no one can forgive cross-sexism in an intimate) habitually suffer in silence and seclusion the most intense mental torture.]

Many Female-Impersonation Explosions.

(3) That no kind of woman's wear was ever known to be in his possession. [For years together I have myself kept woman’s wear under lock and key and occasionally put it on, but none of my every-day associates ever discovered these facts. Cultured androgynes always conceal such practices because their every-day bigoted circles would make them pariahs.]

And as yet nobody has been able to find where Z got the feminine apparel. [It was later discovered he had bought it of a ladies’ outfitter.] Nearly every article found on him was soiled and showed unmistakable signs of wear. [He had probably worn the articles on scores of female-impersonation sprees. Cultured androgynes never let their families get an inkling of these psychic explosions.]

Z was twenty-one. The boy received a common-school education, but left high-school in the second year to work in the large manufacturing establishment of his father. He had a strong bent for mechanics. He took care of the family’s three automobiles, as well as a motor-cycle. Three years ago his father gave him a motor-yacht, which he himself took care of.

During the World War, Z enlisted as mechanician in the navy, but was assigned to shore duty near New York throughout the war.[^[48]] [There exist all degrees of psychic effemination in androgynes. I estimate my own proportions as woman, 80 per cent; man, 20. Evidently Z was around 60, woman and 40, man, judging by his willingness to take a fire-arm into his hands, a thing which I would never do, even as a child shrinking from a cap-pistol. X and Y likewise were less extreme effeminates than myself. They would put up a resistance if attacked, whereas I depended for escape merely on entreaty or flight (Nature gave me |Androgyne Expedients.| the legs of a gazelle); or if they failed me, I pretended loss of consciousness after the first terrific blow. Through this complete passivity, I came out far better than if I had shown fight, and probably saved myself, on several occasions, from being one hundred per cent murdered.]

Z often practiced with a revolver at a target in the basement of his home. [He was pay-master in his father’s factory and often had in his possession large sums, and had to know how to defend himself from robbers.] His rifle was found on his boat, together with cartridges, on the day of his death. Why, if he intended suicide, did he not use his revolver, or else the rifle that was handy at the time on the boat? [This, to me, is conclusive evidence of murder or man-slaughter.]

Z possessed the only key to the cabin of the boat. The family say there were originally two keys, but the duplicate was “lost” about a year ago. [Possibly Z staged all his female-impersonation sprees on his yacht and so gave the duplicate to an idol before whom he regularly posed, just as I have given a trusted idol a key to enter my own apartment whenever he felt like it.]

In High Spirits

On the afternoon preceding the day of his death, Z took his motor-cycle apart in order to renew some mechanism. On his last evening alive, he was in high spirits, setting every one of his circle laughing. So far from being depressed, he seemed flushed with happiness at the prospect of future success in business, having only just received a promotion. [His unusual |Androgynes Compelled to Fabricate.| happiness on the very eve of the murder might indicate that he had just succeeded in coming to terms with a new idol, who, however, the next afternoon, on discovering how “deeply depraved” Z was, strangled him with the rope. I myself have several times been half-murdered under similar circumstances. I have also been elevated into the third heaven of bliss on receiving a favorable message from an idol.]

On the morning of the day of Z’s death, he called on a friend who was to give a party in a few days, and assured the latter he would be present. He then ate noon lunch with his family. It was his father’s birthday, and Z promised to take the family out for an automobile ride in the late afternoon. Right after lunch, Z remarked: “I’ll first make a trip to the boat to pump the water out. It hasn’t been touched for a week, and you know how the water accumulates under the engine. I won’t be gone long.” [It was two miles from Z’s residence to the boat; twenty minutes, by motor-cycle, to get on board. The reason given impresses me as a mere pretext to hide his appointment on the launch and prospective female-impersonation—because the pretext sounds just like me. I am one who has been compelled to falsify much because if my associates had been granted the truth, they would have impiously crushed me. In my university course in ethics, I was taught that it is proper to tell a lie if the persons deceived have no right to the truth. Always those whom I deceived had no right, because the truth would have rendered them insanely cruel.]

In a jovial mood [because about to meet his idol, I suspect] Z departed on his motor-cycle at 1:30. On the way he stopped at a dealer’s—full of laughter |Probably Man-Slaughter.| here also—and filled his cycle tank with a gallon of gasoline. [Two indications against suicide.] At the wharf, he was seen to take oars out of his locker and row to his power-boat anchored fifty yards out. He was next seen, by two men on a yacht anchored fifty feet from his own, to disappear down into his cabin. [The last declaration by any one of having seen Z before discovered dead in his cabin.] These two men remained on the deck of their anchored launch all the afternoon until 5:30, and both are positive that Z did not reappear on his deck. They are equally positive that no one came from or went to Z’s launch.

The owner of the power-boat continuously anchored on the other side of Z’s was aboard from 2:30 until 4:30, and is positive no one approached Z’s boat from that side. The owner of a third power-boat continuously anchored thirty-five feet from Z’s in another direction also spent the afternoon on board, and tells the same story. Two men [custodians and renters of boats] busy all the afternoon around the wharf fifty yards away saw no one go to or come from Z’s launch.

[To me the most probable solution of Z’s death is that it was neither murder nor suicide, but accidental man-slaughter. Perhaps Z had the habit, to satisfy his mania for female-impersonation, of taking on his yacht as an audience young bachelors who owned launches usually anchored near his own. Perhaps a launch, on that Sunday afternoon ideal for yachting, was kept at anchor near Z’s because its owner had plotted to teach Z a lesson, with the “good” intention of curing him of his habit of female-impersonation, believing—as nearly every one does at |Torturing an Androgyne.| present because prohibited by public opinion from learning the truth—that it is a wilful bad habit. When Z had rigged himself in feminine garb (because the female side of his duality demanded it), one or more of the young men from one of the anchored yachts—according to my theory—had tied ropes around him, even around his neck, the latter merely in order to frighten him and prevent his calling for help. The newspapers stated that only a “seaman” could display such skill in tying ropes, and these yachtsmen were amateur seamen. They then, late in the afternoon, after they had had their “fun” with the pitiable androgyne, went ashore, having no thought that the rope around the throat would tighten sufficiently to strangle Z. They designed merely to punish him for his androgynism (1) through his being compelled to lie helpless on the cabin floor for several hours, with a rope tight around his neck to prevent him calling for help, and, (2) more than that, through humiliating him before his family, who finally, anxious over his not returning home, would visit the yacht and discover him in his most ignominious garb and predicament.

[But Z, in his writhings to free himself from his bonds, unfortunately tightened the rope about his neck and was fatally strangled, the young men having departed and no one being at hand to succor him in his death agony. Z was only one more of the many martyrs to the public’s prohibition of the showing up of the myth that bisexuals are monsters of depravity, deserving the crudest forms of torture and even murder. Those guilty of Z’s death—under the theory now being propounded—were fundamentally irresponsible. |Church and Public Opinion Guilty.| The guilt lies with the Church and public opinion, both of which teach that no punishment is too bad for an androgyne.

[A few days after Z’s death, I wrote letters to Z’s father giving all my theories. I desired to do all I could to avenge my brother in calamity by bringing his assailants to justice. It would not be surprising if Z’s father was disinclined to press matters because of shame over the son’s being an androgyne combined with the public’s so terribly misjudging androgynism. Z’s near neighbor, a young college graduate whom I “pumped,” told me first that the fact at the bottom of Z’s death “was of such nature that it could not be discussed”! I could get at the truth only by putting repeated frank questions, since he labored under the terrible delusion that sex is a subject beyond discussion. This college man expressed the opinion that Z was wilfully depraved and “got all that was coming to him.” I interviewed several others who knew the Z family merely by sight and reputation. They all showed intense antipathy, being of the opinion that a family’s having an androgyne relative was sufficient cause for its ostracism.

[A personal parallel: To only one member of my own family—a brother—have I ever confessed my addiction to female-impersonation sprees. I did it twenty years ago, at the age of twenty-seven, because I then had enemies at Ft. X (at the time my regular stamping-ground) who hated androgynism so fiercely as to be capable of murdering an individual in whom the phenomenon cropped up. I therefore explained matters to a brother: that if ever I was found murdered, to look for my assassin among the common |Androgynes’ Relations Ashamed to Prosecute.| soldiers of Ft. X. He replied: “Ralph, if you are ever murdered on one of your female-impersonation sprees, the family would be too much ashamed ever to take the first step to bring your murderer to justice!”]

At the supper hour, Z’s mother telephoned to the wharf and was informed her son had not returned from his yacht. Fearing he had met with an accident, she and her daughter went by automobile to the wharf, arriving at 6:30. It was then almost dark. A boatman rowed the mother, shivering nervously, to the launch. As Mrs. Z descended the forward hatch, her foot struck a human body lying at the foot of the steps, face downward. She felt the hands, which stuck out above the body, and found them cold.

“Linnie has fainted!” Mrs. Z exclaimed. She hastily lighted a lantern, while the boatman remained at the top of the short flight of stairs, apparently paralyzed with fear. But having a light, Mrs. Z discovered the inert body to be clothed in a long blue dress, while the head was covered with a black oilcloth bag. [Such covering of the head indicates non-suicide. The man-killer covered Z’s head because, before abandoning him with the rope around his neck, he (or they) tormented and tortured Z. I have myself had a handkerchief thrust into my mouth to prevent an outcry and been thereupon tortured merely because of insane loathing of androgynism.]

Mrs. Z now exclaimed: “Why, it’s a woman! She’s been strangled, and Linnie’s not here!”

Overcome with terror, she left the boat without further examination. Mr. Z, when his wife greeted him with the frantic cry: “A woman has been strangled on our yacht!” immediately visited it. He removed |Father’s Assertions Discarded.| the hood from the form on the cabin floor, and in amazement recognized the face of his son. Around the neck was a tightened noose of Manila rope tied with a hangman’s knot. Mr. Z is positive the knot was at the back of the neck. [This position is an indication of non-suicide. A suicide would naturally have placed the knot in front.] Unable to loosen the knot, Mr. Z cut the rope. He noticed that both his son’s hands were behind the back, apparently tied with a sash cord, although he did not think to make sure both were tied. For, finding the body cold, he was convulsed with grief and immediately left without making further examination.

The next arrivals were policemen.

The Homicide bureau contends that although there was a slip-knot around the left hand, the right was free and Z used one or both hands to draw the hangman’s noose about his neck. This theory presupposes that the knot was at the throat, and discards the father’s assertion that it was at the back of the neck.

Z’s ankles were tied together with rope, as were his knees and arms. [A queer way to commit suicide for the victim to take the greatest pains to make people think he had been murdered! And when there were a rifle and cartridges on board the launch! And only an hour or two before in a jovial mood, and laying in a supply of gasoline!] A medical examiner calculated that death had occurred between four and five P. M. The two men on the deck of the power-boat on one side of Z’s launch had gone ashore at 5.30, and the single man on the power-boat on the other side, at 4.30. None had heard any cry or other sound from the Z |Z’s Woman’s Apparel.| launch [35 to 50 feet distant and on an ultra-still Sunday afternoon when sounds carry unusually well.] When these witnesses went ashore, Z’s rowboat was fastened to his launch—in the same position as when his mother arrived.

The woman’s apparel in which Z was found clad consisted of a chemise; corset; corset-cover with rose-colored baby ribbon running through the lace; a pair of pink bloomers with ruffles at the knees; high black stockings fastened by garters to the corset; a pair of high laced woman’s shoes, with French high heels; and finally, the blue-checked gingham dress. All the apparel fitted Z well.

The clothing in which Z had left home was found on a bunk in the cabin—excepting an overshirt, which was pinned over the porthole nearest the launch fifty feet distant on whose deck two men spent the afternoon. Aside from this circumstance, the police discovered no sign of disorder in any part of the launch. They discovered no other articles or circumstances having a bearing on the case. [Androgynes are in general non-resistant. Z probably did not struggle against his tormentor, as I myself have always been absolutely passive on such occasions. Any way he probably did not even imagine that he was under any risk of death. He probably expected to return home within an hour—as he had previously done after dozens of female-impersonation explosions.]

But reporters, who later examined the boat, found a thick hickory club in a drawer. [My theory is that Z was accustomed to entertain on the boat, in the absence of any of his family, adolescents before whom he had a craze to impersonate a mademoiselle—the |Assassins of High Morality.| common practice of the more extreme type of androgyne. He probably entertained only one at a time. Fearing he might be attacked by one of these perhaps doubtful characters, he kept the club for self-defence, as well as the rifle already mentioned. The fact that he did not attempt to avail himself of these weapons on this occasion indicates that his assailants were young men whose high morality was known to Z.] In a chest in an out-of-the-way place, the reporters found a bundle of wrapping paper stained and torn. Inside was a metal shoe-horn. [My theory is that Z stored his feminine wardrobe in this paper and chest. The paper was probably that in which the feminine outfit had originally been brought to the launch and was preserved for possible use in carrying it away.]

The Z family kept a supply of beer on the yacht, but affirmed: “Linnie hated beer and never learned to drink it.” [Very androgynesque. Girl-boys are inclined to be puritans in every respect except female-impersonation and coquetry.]

The only feminine article that Z wore which the family recognized was a multi-colored silk ribbon fastened around his waist and belonging to a sister.

The autopsy showed that death had resulted solely from strangulation. All the ropes used in binding Z belonged to his yacht. [The reason Z was done to death with ropes is that there naturally were many on board a yacht and it was a noiseless death. There was a loaded rifle on the yacht. That a noiseless method was chosen indicates murder rather than suicide. The use of ropes also indicates a yachtsman as author of the crime—because accustomed to handling ropes. He lives and breathes ropes.]

Z of Androgyne Physique.

Z was five feet four in height and weighed 145 pounds. [Short and plump build characteristic of androgynes.] The city medical examiner noted that the lower ribs were “retracted, possibly due to the use of corsets.” He also noted that “the beard and moustache are scanty.” [Meaning if not shaven close. Such scantiness is common in androgynes.]

If the murder theory is true, the assassin must have planned to murder with great care. [It was all done on the spur of the moment, and the death probably an accident.] He must have had an accomplice who brought him to the boat before the murder, and took him away afterward, and he must have known in some mysterious way that Z was going to visit the boat that Sunday afternoon. [If Z was murdered, he had had an appointment on the yacht with his assassin. The latter must have arrived before the yachtsmen who spent the afternoon on the closely encircling decks, and watched that they go ashore before himself. At dusk he could have swum away without being seen. At that hour on a Sunday, there were many desolate points on the nearby shore at which he could have unobservedly emerged. But the most daring criminal would hardly have committed a murder with several men only a few feet away on the decks of the encircling yachts. A single shriek from the victim would have immediately brought several men on board.]

The care with which the clothing was put on certainly seems to indicate that Z himself put it on, every article being properly adjusted.

[The authorities, because ignorant of androgyne psychology and habits and despising a bisexual (myself) |Author’s Own Foretaste of Z’s Fate.| too much to listen to his-her theories, were on a false scent. At the date this volume goes to press (December, 1921), the Z mystery—as well as the X, Y, and Q—has not been cleared up by the authorities, although none of the four is much of a problem to myself, knowing how the world treats androgynes.

[It is a strange coincidence that about a score of years before Z was strangled, within two miles of his yacht’s point of anchorage, in a large patch of woods at night, I was, as an aftermath of a female-impersonation, being roughly teased by six “young fellows.” To cap the climax, they led me toward a tree and said they were “going to get a rope and hang” me. Horrified, I feigned an epileptic fit to save myself. See my Autobiography of an Androgyne, page 208.

[While I have never believed Z a suicide, it is a possibility. A new idol with whom he had had an appointment on the yacht that afternoon might have shown utter disgust at Z’s revelations—as I have myself witnessed in a confidant—and pitilessly abandoned him. This misguided attitude might have brought on Z a sympathetic disgust with himself as female-impersonator and cross-dresser. According to this theory, Z wished to punish and heap indignities on his own body—just as I have myself, in my verdant middle teens, taken a whip and chastised my own body because lustful, homosexual thoughts had invaded my mind, while crying out: “‘O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death!’” Perhaps Z wished to punish his own body by depriving it of breath while in female garb and so publish to the world the despicableness of his own physical personality. In no other way could Z’s spiritually minded |Suicide Theory.| psyche better revenge itself on his carnal body than to have the latter’s grossness proclaimed on the housetops.

[In case Z was a suicide, the idol who had only a few minutes before pitilessly scorned his advances was very likely an adolescent spending that afternoon on one of the three nearest yachts. As I have said, the case came to a curious abrupt ending in the papers, as if the entire solution had become known to those immediately interested, but the public was not let into the secret in order to shield unblameworthy parties.

[If Z was a suicide, I have myself passed through a very similar experience. (See my Autobiography of an Androgyne, page 235.) Because heartlessly jilted by a new idol and afraid I would, as “a monster of depravity,” be cast out of the caravan with which I was travelling in an uninhabited region of the Rockies, I walked away in the forest alone at dusk a mile from camp having in mind suicide by being torn to pieces by bears, with which the forest abounded, and several of which I saw that night roaming within a hundred feet. Like Z, I had not left behind a single oral or written word as to suicide. I was acting on the spur of the moment. For several hours I experienced such depths of sorrow as not one human out of ten thousand ever tastes. Continuously for an hour, out of hearing of the camp, I wailed at the top of my voice over my terrible lot in life—that of a despised, hated, and outlawed “degenerate” (as the hypocritical nine-tenths of civilized humanity delight to call me)—and over the possibly impending unfathomable disgrace among a party of rough men with whom I must travel until we got back to a railroad. I experienced a violent desire |Author’s Attempt at Suicide.| to be devoured by bears. But the All-Seeing overruled that they did not attack me.][^[49]]

Newspaper Accounts of Murders.