Author’s Note.—Within a year of the above confessions, Angelo—Phyllis was found dead in “his-her” apartment. The skull had been fractured with a hammer.
Part Six:
Newspaper Accounts of Murders of Androgynes
Author’s Note.—These excerpts from New York dailies are presented in order to impress upon the public that such murders of inoffensive androgynes are a fairly common occurrence because that public has tabooed, on the basis of prudery alone, enlightenment of the general reader on the facts of androgynism. I withhold names of journals and dates of issue, and cover identities, out of respect for the victims and their families. But I assure those families that one of my present objects is to avenge, by enlightening the public, the unmerited assassination of their dear ones and thus prevent in the future such martyrdom of innocents. The families have my most sincere sympathy, particularly because I myself have several times been brought near death’s door in the manner in which their unfortunate—but not in the least immoral—relatives were put out of the way.
Each of the first three murders was apparently the work of some prude not at all criminally minded, but feeling himself the mandatory of society in ridding the world of “a monster of deepdyed depravity,” according as he was taught by church and synagogue. The hare-brained prude had been prohibited by public opinion from learning the truth that androgynism is |Androgynes Not Sodomites.| solely a matter of abnormal psychology and anatomy, and not at all immorality. The term which best calls up the sensations of revulsion of such a murderer is “sodomite.” To its highly malodorous and fundamentally false connotation and application can be traced every year, in every corner of Christendom (particularly puritan), murders of inoffensive androgynes.
The author’s comments are in brackets.
I. Two Murder Mysteries Which, Strangely Alike in Many Ways, Baffled All Efforts to Solve.
(Much condensed, and slightly edited for diction, by author of The Female-Impersonators, from article in a New York daily.)
VICTIMS WERE TWO ELDERLY BACHELORS OF MEANS, LIVING IN THE SAME SECTION OF CITY—X AND Y WERE BOTH FOND OF PERSONAL ADORNMENT AND DISPLAY AND BOTH HABITUALLY CHOSE YOUNG MEN AS ASSOCIATES—EACH WAS SLAIN IN HIS OWN APARTMENT—ONLY TWENTY-NINE DAYS SEPARATED THE TWO MURDERS—MANY CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE TWO CRIMES BORE CURIOUS RESEMBLANCE
Consideration of recent terrible crimes in New York which have halted agents of justice at dead walls of mystery must bring to mind the X-Y murders of a little more than a year ago. They were committed within five weeks, the scenes within a few blocks on fashionable Murray Hill.