Pgh Lesbian Correspondents

The work of searching for missing, murdered, unidentified and unclaimed people can be isolating, the sort of loneliness that seeps back into the work. And that can be unproductive.

Understanding the Terms

• Missing: Individuals whose location is unknown. 
• Murdered: Individuals whose death was caused by another person and for whom the perpetrator may not have been identified. 
• Unidentified: Deceased individuals whose identity is unknown, often due to decomposition or lack of identification. 
• Unclaimed: Deceased individuals who have been identified but whose bodies are not collected by family or friends. 

I have a list of 13 people on my desktop – 13 possible trans and/or queer individuals who are missing, murdered, unidentified, and unclaimed.

Maybe you know something and don’t realize it, so I’m sharing that list. Please know that in some cases I don’t know if a name is assigned at birth or chosen. I mean no disrespect – I want to find the truth so we can see them for who they are.

• Unnamed Trans Man in YouTube video
  • More of a story about allyship, no identifying details.
• Unidentified Black Trans Woman found in San Francisco
  • No information
• Aubrey Dameron
  • Remains found, classified as a homicide
• Shaun Lanry
  • Can’t find information, can’t find OG source
• Melanie Davidson (Max)
  • missing
• Gabina Leal (Gabby)
  • missing
• Elisa Wilson
  • Found deceased July 13, 2025 in Oklahoma City, OK
• Unnamed Trans Woman in Arizona
  • Murdered on Navajo territory. Unnamed, but two men sentenced in her murder. https://ktar.com/arizona-news/navajo-nation-transgender-murder/5734045/
• Jordan Rogers
  • Jordan Rodgers was found deceased in Washingon State in 2024; COD unknown to me
• Charlotte Fosgate
  • death by suicide
• Maria Lopez was murdered in Indio, CA
  • Shot and killed in 2022
• Meka Shabazz
  • Death by suicide 2024
• Jax Gratton
  • Body recovered, COD undetermined, deemed suspicious

A decision by Meta to remove posts from their search feature has made this work so much harder – we spend hour combing through social media posts, comments, etc. Public of course. That’s how we find people – we look for them in the spaces where their people gather. Picking up whispers and hints and often very affirmed realities. We look through TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Only Fans, etc. A few times, I found full interviews on YouTube shows which were a gold mine to let the individual speak for themself.

Read about this decision by Meta and some interesting proposed workarounds.

Back to my original point – the isolation of searching for our neighbors. I dislike when people praise me or lift me up for doing this. What are they doing? What are you doing? I started because a friend asked me to write one blog post in 2013. There was nothing more noble than helping out a friend. But I couldn’t turn away once I realized how awful the media situation was.

And that’s how I came to learn the ‘media fail checklist’ developed by Monica Roberts of the blog Transgriot.

Misgender the person at every opportunity?  Check
Use police mugshot?  Check
Drag old criminal record into the story?  Check
‘Deception meme’ injected into story?    Check
‘Tragic transsexual’ meme injected into this story?   Check
Use salacious and sensationalist headlines?  Check
Not give a rats anus about the victim’s dignity and their femme presentation?  Check
Disrespecting another African-American transwoman?   Check.

I’ve been working on a project with some other researchers and I think about Monica quite a bit. That announcement will come this week. Monica often had a network involved in finding information, a critical tool. I also thought of her again when 1320 people read a blog post about the brutal death of trans man Ezra Hulett – a post I wrote in mid-July. Why? Most came from FB so obviously someone shared it.

It isn’t for the sake of vanity that I want to know where/how the post is being shared. Maybe there’s information. Ezra’s body has been repatriated and a private autopsy arranged. But there are a thousand unanswered questions.

If I were to add anything to Monica’s list now, it would be “erasure” – no US or English language media reported on Ezra’s death. The woman who was murdered on Navajo tribal lands by two male Navajo men remains unnamed despite convictions. Another woman remain unidentified. You can see how that theme winds its way thought my own list above.

Some of these folks have active allies online searching for details – Jax Gratton, Aubrey Dameron, and Elisa Wilson for example. That sort of visibility matters – people get invested and find things, especially hard to find things like little details on Twitch or similar sites.

I hope you will get invested. All 13 of these individuals deserve to be found or remembered with dignity.

The five year anniversary of Monica’s death will be October 5. How are you helping continue her legacy?