Some say her name was Yolanda. Others say she was Tanti by day and Raquel at night. Raquel, Tanti, or Yolanda, it doesn’t matter any more. What does matter now is that she’s dead. That very early on the morning of Tuesday, April 26, as the Number 7 train passed along the tracks above Roosevelt Avenue, she was met by the blade of a knife in a dark alley near 77th Street and Astoria Boulevard, in Jackson Heights. This according to Maritza, a Mexican transsexual who, though she claims she’s 22 years old, looks like she’s lived two such lives.

“We’re not surprised, because this is not the first time something like this has happened around here,” says the nearly six-foot blonde through her thick, meaty lips, as her red fingernails adjust her bra straps holding her two pride possessions. “They cost me $2,000, and they’re almost new,” she says in a voice that goes from heavy to high-pitched.

But why did they kill Raquel? “They killed her because she was a faggot,” she answers crudely. “That’s the truth, and don’t you change my words, because that was the only reason. There’s nothing else to say.”

A black car stops at the corner of 69th and Roosevelt. Maritza gets nervous and starts walking away without explanation. It’s four o’clock on Thursday morning. “At this very hour they killed my friend. They stabbed her many times and left her lying there like a dog.” The Police Department says there was only one stab wound in the chest. That there are no suspects and that the victim, “a 30-year-old man, was taken to Elmhurst Hospital, where he died.”

But why is she leaving? What happened? “Don’t look back, but those guys back there are undercover cops.” So what’s the problem? “They’re always trying to pick a fight and take us to the precinct because they say we’re prostitutes. Some are. Others aren’t. Some of the girls lead a normal life during the day, and at night they just come out to have fun, like me, but that makes no difference to the cops. To them, all of us who dress like this are whores. I’ve been taken to the precinct like four times just for walking down the street. In there they throw us in with everybody like we were common criminals, and they even threaten to report us to Immigration.”

Maritza keeps walking along Roosevelt toward the 74th Street train station. She keeps looking over her shoulder. “Me, I’m more scared of these guys than I am of the ones who killed my friend. The police kick us around. Don’t they realize we’re human beings, or what?”

Roosevelt Avenue is beginning to fill up. Some of the people coming out of the bars and discotheques call for taxis parked along the curb. The blonde takes her leave. “I better go home because tonight I want to sleep in my own house.”

At some distance, three women can be seen walking. One of them wears a rose-pink dress so transparent you can see almost to the bottom of her soul. She is sporting a pair of glittering heels. She says she’s from Chile and is called “Mimi.” That’s it; just that and no last name. A woman 24 hours a day, but “with my thing well tucked in down there.”

The other two are Katty and Jessie. They are both dressed in miniskirts without stockings, and high heels. Jessie, from Puerto Rico, says they won’t talk. That they keep their mouths shut because they could be buying trouble. She steps into a corner to smoke, under the stairs that lead up to the 69th Street station. The Chilean and the Mexican remain, but only Mimi will talk. “They left Tanti all cut up over here. They stabbed her many times and nobody did anything. They’re attacking us more now, but nobody talks about that.”

Mimi puts on a white coat, one of those that imitate diva fashions. She starts walking toward 41st Avenue – because that’s where she lives, she says –famous among the lovers of the night, well loved by scores of prostitutes, some of them transsexuals, because it’s a good place to pick up clients. It is also hated by some area residents who say they are tired of so many high heels.

Two police patrol cars pass by. One of them stops for a couple of minutes and then slowly starts off again. Such movement is normal. “They’re checking out whom they’re going to pick up tonight,” says Mimi, who has been arrested several times along this street just for being dressed as a woman. “I’m not a prostitute. I’m just someone who wants to live differently. What’s wrong with that, huh?”

The rails under the #7 train suddenly screech. Down Roosevelt you can see only other girls walking. It’s starting to get cold. The street is half empty now, and no one wants to walk by the alley where they killed Tanti, Raquel or Yolanda; no one dares, because no one wants to be next. No one.

“The police are doing a good job in this area”

“We know some people don’t like transvestites or transsexuals, but they can’t say the police abuse them or arrest them for nothing,” said an officer who asked not to be identified and who does night patrols on Roosevelt Avenue and other streets of Jackson Heights and Corona, Queens. “These girls complain about us, because we’re plenty strict in our work against prostitution.”

According to information provided by neighbors and the authorities, many transvestites in the past few years have turned the area bounded by Roosevelt and 41st Avenues and 69th and 77th Streets into nocturnal red light zones. So the Police Department has doubled its vigilance in the area.

“The police are doing a good job in this area, and the proof of that is that the crime index has gone down by 17 percent,” said Officer Doris García, adding that the NYPD has a special unit to investigate hate crimes, which have also dropped by 17 percent in the city as a whole.

But although the NYPD says it does not abuse transvestites and transsexuals, organizations that defend their rights, like the New York City Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project, claim that every year they receive many complaints of excessive use of force by the authorities.

“Sometimes the police do attack pretty heavily because they believe they’re prostitutes or they’re doing something illegal. The people who call us tell us they use foul language,” said Basilio Lucas, coordinator of the Anti-Violence Project.

But Lucas also recognized that in general the police maintain a respectful attitude, and that when abuses are charged, they respond efficiently.

Héctor Gómez, manager of a gay bar in Jackson Heights, says that in order to put an end to violence against those who are sexually different, it is necessary for people to denounce such acts, and for the community to become more unified.

If someone is a victim of sexual abuse or discrimination, he or she can call (212) 714-1141.