Police in Thornton, Colorado arrested Allen Ray Andrade after responding to a noise complaint early Wednesday morning and finding him in Zapata's stolen car.
Andrade now faces charges of first-degree murder as a hate crime, identity theft and aggravated motor vehicle theft. He has been refused bail.
It will be the first murder in Weld County to be prosecuted as a hate crime.
In 2005 a new law added protections for people based on sexual orientation, including "transgender status," to Colorado's "bias-motivated crimes" statute.
Zapata's sister found her in her apartment in Greeley, Colorado.
She had been beaten to death on July 17 and covered with a blanket.
Andrade told police that he met Zapata on July 15 for a one-time sexual encounter through social networking site MocoSpace.
Andrade reportedly discovered Zapata's male genitalia the next day after seeing photographs around the apartment, becoming suspicious, and forcibly grabbing her crotch after her insistence that she was "all woman."
Andrade then hit Zapata twice in the head with a fire extinguisher after striking her with his fists.
While cleaning the scene for evidence, Andrade told police that, though he thought he'd "killed it," Zapata tried to sit up.
He then struck her a third time with the fire extinguisher and also took her purse, keys and phone before fleeing in her 2003 Chrysler PT Cruiser.
"You get the sense that maybe he wasn't seeing Angie as a person. Then you get an idea of the violence behind this act," Crystal Middlestadt, Director of Training and Education for the Colorado Anti-Violence Program told PageOneQ.com.
Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck told the Denver Post that he will aggressively prosecute Andrade.
"It just can't be tolerated at any level. And I hope that if anything positive were to come of this, we would develop a stronger relationship with the gay, lesbian, transgendered community so that they understand just how seriously we take crimes like this and how vigorously we will pursue justice in a situation like this," Buck said.
About 200 people attended the July 23rd memorial service for Angie Zapata.
"Angie gave me the power to not care what people thought of me," friend Angie Portillo, a lesbian, said at the service. "She always just wanted to be who she was, and that was female and to be loved."
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- LindseyIndigo
- added this
- added August 05, 2008
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It must be a lot easier to murder an 'it' as opposed to a human being and it is really sad that some people still lack the education and awareness that would allow them to think of transgender subjects in 'human' terms.
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- JanaPokana
- 5 months ago
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One can only hope Andrade will soon become an "it" in prison...but even that doesn't diminish the horror and sadness of this story.
Thornton Co. describes itself..."Thornton is a diverse community with a strong commitment to quality of life and environmental issues."
M2F pre-op trans people MUST give full disclosure to any potential sexual partner. Being passable enough to lure a "straight" man into a sexual encounter is obviously a dangerous, deadly game, assuming that is what happened in this case.
And that statement in NO WAY assigns any guilt in this horrible crime to Angie.
Oddly enough, since many M2F trans are highly feminine and sensuous, "straight" men are what we attract.
A sad, sad story.
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- handibaby_tgdallas
- 5 months ago
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That is often the story of murdered transsexuals that are passable and feel and that are really a woman to female inside and out and tragic things like this will happen. Just because Miss Zapata, like many other transsexual victiims did not reveal her birth defect as I call it to specific heterosexual man who are usually attracted to the womanhood and attractiveness we have as really female that doesn't have Andrade or any other man to violate or destroy and kill a person who is reslly what they are, "a female", society has options of learning to educationally and intellectually tolerating encounters with such person as Zapata and me and many others. It is really awful that people's ignorancies and hatreds have to be exhibited upon our woman livelihood, we have a right to be who we really are and that's "female" without any violence or intimidation.
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- Carlacarel50
- 4 months ago
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