OAKLAND — An Alameda County jury convicted a San Jose transgender activist of murdering three family members inside their Oakland home after less than a full day of deliberations.
Dana Rivers, 67, of San Jose, murdered Charlotte Reed, 56, her wife Patricia Wright, 57, and Wright’s 19-year-old son, Benny Toto Diambu-Wright, on Oct. 11, 2016, the jury found. Now, the case has moved on to the sanity phase — set to start Dec. 5 — where the same jury will rule whether Rivers was legally insane at the time of the murders. If so, state law dictates she’s sent to a mental hospital until she’s cured and/or for as long as she’d serve in prison for a triple murder conviction.
The evidence against Rivers was hard to refute; when police arrived at the victims’ home on Dunbar Avenue in Oakland, Rivers was standing outside, drenched in the victims’ blood, having just gotten onto a motorcycle containing one of at least three murder weapons. Prosecutors alleged she shot and stabbed Reed and Wright, then shot Diambu-Wright when he came to investigate what was happening. Diambu-Wright staggered outside the home and collapsed, dead, in the middle of the street.
Prosecutors claimed the motive was a fallout between Reed and Rivers, on-again, off-again friends, which centered on Reeds’ departure from a defunct all-women motorcycle club known as the Deviants. Pointing to a tattoo on Rivers that defines her as a “1 percenter” — referring to the small portion of motorcyclists that join gangs — authorities say Rivers became wrapped up in her identity as an enforcer for an outlaw motorcycle club and sought revenge against Reed after she left the Deviants.
The defense argued it was preposterous to suggest Rivers killed three people on her own, at age 61, and argued a fifth person must have been inside the home that night. Prosecutors argued Rivers spent weeks gaining Reed’s trust, arranged to spend the night, waited for the victims to fall asleep, then used a gun equipped with a silencer to shoot Reed and Wright in their beds.
“They all went to sleep that night expecting to wake up the next day,” Deputy District Attorney Abigail Mulvihill told jurors during trial.
After shooting the couple, Rivers stabbed them both, slicing Reed dozens of times, which Mulvihill described as a frenzied attack designed to “torture” and “butcher” the victim. Wright was struck with the knife too, but not as many times as Reed, who was “unrecognizable,” Mulvihill said.
Before her arrest, Rivers was best known as a schoolteacher who became an international news story when she came out as transgender to her students in a high school in Antelope, Calif. She was subsequently fired for sharing details of her transition, then sued the district and received $150,000 in a settlement. In the aftermath, she became an activist for transgender rights, and ultimately moved to the Bay Area to restart her life as an educator.
Rivers was arrested minutes after the murders. She has spent the past six years awaiting trial, in part because doctors were debating her mental health status and preparing reports for the court, records show. She formally pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, though her attorney argued she was factually innocent of the murders as well.
Source: www.mercurynews.com