Hey Kids - It's the Queer Day Mailbag!
· #1: Remember the shootings nightmare earlier this month at Puzzles Lounge? A fund has been set up for the victims. Send donations to: St. Anne's Credit Union, Puzzles Victim Fund, P.O. BOX 0 (zero), Fall River, MA 02724.
· #2: Garrett, a long time reader of Queer Day, writes: "Can you help spread the word that the GLBT-SA at the University of North Carolina is hosting the 4th annual UNITY Confernce on April 7th-9th and already over 150 students have registered!" Consider it done Garrett and it's great to see the such hardcore support from the administration.
· Pete Doherty, Kate Moss' ex-boyfriend and bisexual Babyshambles' lead singer 
Jacob Robida, 18, entered Puzzles Lounge last week and asked the bartender if it was a gay bar. When he learned that it was, he pulled out a hatchet and struck a man in the head, then struck another man who tried to help the first victim. He then pulled out a gun and opened fire, shooting the man who tried tried to help as well as another patron. The bartender named Phillip says Robida aimed the gun at him, but he said that the gun failed to fire. "I heard a click, and his eyes were just squinted," 
Lee Tamahori, the major film director who brought the James Bond hit "Die Another Day" and "XXX: State of the Union" to the big screen, 
I've been following the James Maestas 
A federal judge, Michael Ponsor (pictured), has ruled that Wayne Healy, a gay man who was convicted of the murder of his former brother-in-law Richard Chalue in 1980, should either be released from prison or given a new trial. Ponsor said prosecutors emphasized a (quote) "homosexual element to the murder," but suppressed evidence that there had been no sexual encounter. Healy was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Ponsor ruled that suppressing that information handicapped the defense "in an obviously devastating manner" and that doing so was "
Jose Tavares, 17, has been charged in the slaying of Schlomy Rejwan, a gay masseur in New York City. According to law enforcement Tavares "definitely played a role" - but the suspects family insists the killing was carried out by a mystery man and that the Manhattan Bridge High School junior went there seeking a massage having answered an advertisement in the back of an alternative newspaper and that a mystery man sexually assaulted Tavares and later killed Rejwan as the teen watched. Tavares has been charged with second-degree murder and first-degree arson. 
The Reverend Lonnie Latham, an outspoken homophobic pastor, has been arrested after propositioning a male undercover police officer outside a hotel. As Latham, 59, left jail he 
In response to our 
A judge ruled today that the slayings of two gay men in New York and Pennsylvania were so similar to the deaths of two dismembered bodies found in New Jersey that a jury should consider whether all four were horribly murdered by the same person. The ruling was a victory for prosecutors in their case against Richard Rogers, the former nurse accused of killing two men and leaving their body parts wrapped in double-knotted plastic bags at highway rest stops. Rogers was arrested in May 2001 after forensic scientists said they matched his fingerprints to those found on plastic bags in New Jersey containing two victims' body parts.
The brutal murder of Daniel Fetty in Ohio is a story that has broken my heart twice - once simply due to his death, twice because the mainstream and gay press have virtually ignored the horrific crime. Three men beat Fetty with bricks, boards and bottles, stripped him naked and threw his body in a dumpster 
Do you know this man? Columbus Police say Byrol Pierce, pictured, has been on the run from the law for more than a year and should be considered dangerous. Pierce is accused of attempted murder for the stabbing of a gay man two years ago and stealing another gay man's identity. 
In the UK, Bryan Bamford 
Philip Seymour Hoffman, pictured, is playing Truman Capote in the new film about the queer "Breakfast at Tiffany's" author who was 
Antoine Jacobs, 24, is facing 12 to 24 years in prison after 
A year ago a 32-year-old man 
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a transgender inclusive hate crimes amendment yesterday, despite noise from gay critics who said that including the trans community would sabotage the bill's future. While a sexual orientation hate crimes bill has passed the Senate three times before and the House has held two procedural votes on hate crimes legislation, this is the first time an explicitly written transgender inclusive bill has been passed by the House or the Senate. That's the good news.
Shaquille O'Neal witnessed the gay bashing of a gay couple in Miami, so he 
A federal grand jury in Providence, Rhode Island, indicted naked gay Survivor millionaire winner Richard Hatch today on charges of tax evasion and fraudulently using charitable donations for personal expenses. In a 10-count indictment, the grand jury alleges that Hatch, failed to report about $1,037,000 income from Survivor and about $391,000 in income from a half-dozen other sources.
The verdict is in and while it's a good news/bad news scenario, with the first trial resulting in a hung jury all around today's news is more of a victory. The Alameda County jury 
Jose Merel, accused of killing transgender teen Gwen Araujo, 
Nobody's too happy about Estanislao Martinez's (pictured) four-year sentence in the 
Criminologist Doug Janoff, pictured, says violence against gays and lesbians in Canada is more "frenzied" and intense than that perpetrated against other victims of violent crime. "The violence is real, it is intense and it really needs to be taken seriously," Janoff says. In his new book, "
Bisexual criminal Karla Homolka, Canada's most notorious female offender, has been 
Latasha Byears helped the Los Angeles Sparks win two WNBA championships, then 
While the 
Harry Benjamin has reportedly been presiding over Mass for the northern Virginia chapter of Dignity, the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Catholic organization. Trouble is that Benjamin, 63, a former Catholic priest, did prison time in Michigan in 2003 after pleading no contest to charges that he assaulted a 14-year-old boy in the mid-1980s, when he worked as a priest in Detroit. He's listed on the Virginia sex offender registry and prosecutors in Michigan say they recently were notified that Benjamin might be violating the terms of his probation. 
Elaine DeVinny, pictured, doesn't understand why anyone would have wanted to kill her son. Kevin Hale 
Prosecutors 
Roy Nash was 
Ken Nyquist was 
Rod Hall, 53, the openly gay "gentle, caring and mild-mannered" literary agent behind the hit films "The Full Monty" and "Billy Elliot," was stabbed to death by Usman Durrani, 22, after being chained up in manacles in a sado-masochistic sex game. Prosecuting attorney 