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A body discarded in a field. Cold weather. Signs of torture.
So far, seven people have been charged with the murder of Sam Nordquist, a 24-year-old Black transgender man who was tortured and murdered in western New York state last month. It was a case that Capt Kelly Swift of the state police’s bureau of criminal investigation said was “one of the most horrific crimes I have ever investigated”.
Some similarities between the deaths of Nordquist and Matthew Shepard, the 21-year-old University of Wyoming student who was brutally attacked, tortured and left to die while tied to a fence outside Laramie, Wyoming, in 1998, are becoming apparent. Two men were eventually convicted for Shepard’s murder, and his death became symbolic of anti-gay hate and helped fuel the LGBTQ+ rights movement.
Seven people have now been charged in connection with the murder of Nordquist, but it’s not yet clear if his death will help to kick off a comparable movement focused on anti-trans hate.
Details of the Nordquist case remain sketchy, but the suspects are accused of subjecting Nordquist of “prolonged physical and psychological abuse” after he had travelled from Minnesota to the Finger Lakes region in September to meet a girlfriend, Precious Arzuaga, whom he met online.
Nordquist’s family reported him missing on 9 February. Police began a missing persons investigation, and investigators found his body three days later in a field 15 miles south-east of Patty’s Lodge motel in Hopewell, New York, where he had been staying. Arzuaga, 38, of Canandaigua, New York, is among those charged with murder.
“I had a bad feeling from the start it wasn’t going to end well,” Nordquist’s older sister, Kayla, said earlier this month. “He thought he was in love with this woman and he thought that this woman loved him back.” His mother, Linda Nordquist, described Sam as “outgoing … with a heart of gold”.
Details released in a felony complaint for five of the defendants said they had “recklessly engaged” in conduct that created “a grave risk of death … by torturing, sexually assaulting [him] with a table leg and broomstick and repeatedly subjecting [him] to prolonged beatings”.
Evidence suggests that Nordquist had been subjected to physical abuse between December and February culminating in what the Ontario county district attorney, Jim Ritts, said was “by far the worst homicide investigation that our office has ever been a part of … no human being should have to endure what Sam endured.”
Prosecutors have declined to designate Nordquist’s murder as a hate crime, citing the fact that “Sam and his assailants were known to each other, identified as LGBTQ+, and at least one of the defendants lived with Sam in the time period leading up to the offense.”
Five were initially charged – Precious Arzuaga; Patrick Goodwin, 30, a registered sex offender; Kyle Sage, 33, who carries a conviction for disseminating indecent material to minors; Jennifer Quijano, 30, and Emily Motyka, 19. Then came two others, Kimberly Sochia, 29, and Thomas Eaves, 21, both charged with second-degree murder of depraved indifference. And investigators say there may be more.
Under New York law a hate crime is defined as an offense committed “in whole or in substantial part because of a belief or perception regarding the race, color, national origin, ancestry, gender, gender identity or expression, religion, religious practice, age, disability, or sexual orientation of a person, regardless of whether the belief or perception is correct”. It does not matter – in theory – how the assailants identify. It is the victim’s identity that is important and the assailants’ attitude towards it.
Many questions remain how or if Nordquist’s gender and race played in his death. But one thing is certain: the horrific crime happened at a time when trans rights are under attack across the US.
“The murder of Sam Nordquist shows us that we have not done enough to change the material conditions of trans people’s live, particularly trans people of color,” said Raquel Willis, the Black trans co-founder of Gender Liberation Movement.
The investigation is unfolding against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s cuts to legal protections for trans people. On taking office, Donald Trump ordered the government to define sex as only biologically male or female. The National Park Service eliminated all references to transgender people from its website for the Stonewall national monument in New York that commemorates a 1969 gay rights riot.
Meanwhile, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission dropped lawsuits related to transgender discrimination claims and openly transgender service members are now barred from the US military. The administration also moved to end federal support for gender transition care in people younger than 19, and to bar transgender athletes from competing on girls’ and women’s sports teams.
There is no doubt that trans people are subjected to high degrees of violence, especially trans people of color. Reported incidents of violence against trans and gender-nonconforming people also increased 16% in 2023, according to a Human Rights Campaign report based on FBI data. About 84% of victims of all fatal violence targeting trans and gender-expansive were people of color since 2013, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
In a February press release, the Anti-Violence Project (AVP) said regardless of classification, anti-trans violence often intersects with racism, hate violence and intimate partner violence.
A report in the Washington Post last week pointed to an increase in the number of trans people looking to arm themselves, replicating a tradition of members of US minorities purchasing guns for safety, including the Black Panthers in the 1960s and women seeking self-defense options in the 1970s and 1980s.
“There is definitely a heightened sense of anxiety and fear, a knowingness and unknowingness, that things are getting worse when they were bad to start off with,” said Eric Stanley, a UC Berkeley gender studies professor and author of Atmospheres of Violence.
Prosecutors in western New York have not ruled out the possibility of more arrests in the Nordquist case and warn that it was still a “very fluid” investigation.
Meanwhile, vigils and tributes to Nordquist are being held across the region. New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, said in a statement that she had directed state police to provide “any and all support and resources” as law enforcement officials investigate Nordquist’s death and whether it was a hate crime.
But, for the moment, the echoes to the Shepard case remain. In a statement, the foundation in his name said it was joining the LGBTQ+ community in mourning Nordquist’s death, reposting a statement by the Human Rights Campaign: “Trans people are our friends, our family, our neighbors. They deserve to live their lives with dignity and joy, without fear of violence and hate.”
