![[Self]Hate Crime](/images/stories/SH1C/Selfhate_crime/jsa3.jpg)
Long has been the road to conviction for Juan José Martínez Matos, confessed murderer of Jorge Stevens López. Heightened have been the tensions across the social stratosphere; from banal justifications of the crime for Stevens’ choice of lifestyle (i.e. the apparent trafficking of his body) to screams of outrage from the queer community upon the nature of the heinous crime stemming from the murderer’s confession.
After the obvious lawyered move of claiming insanity, Martínez Matos’s was declared apt to stand before a jury of his peers, after the results of his psychiatric report had been known to the D.A. Let’s review the killer’s story. The night of the murder he was driving around an area known for its prostitution rate. He picked up Stevens, believing him to be a woman, and drove him home. Upon realizing Stevens was a man in drag, he goes into a rage frenzy (reverting apparently to a prison rape experience) based on fear for his survival. In between blackouts, he commits the murder and dismemberment of the body; followed by the disposal of the remains and the burning of the evidence.
Let’s poke some holes on his story. First, I will assume that Juan José Martínez is neither blind and deaf nor a complete moron (borderline on short bus material). I understand the capacity to transform into beautiful women of Puerto Rico’s drag circle. However, looking close and listening to their voices you can tell what lies beneath. A long drive home of awkward conversation would have let you know what you were getting into. But, let’s move on with his story.
Stevens’s body frame was one that looked fragile in nature; no threat could ever be made to the murderer by the combination of strength/demeanor inherent in both of them. The blackout story, along with the prison gang bang flashback, would only be fitting if the dismemberment hadn’t occurred. Upon seeing the victim dead, the killer would have come to his senses and dispose of a WHOLE body if he didn’t want to get caught.
It’s the dismemberment that strikes oddly. Its passionate nature and the dangerous repercussions this could bring into play. The vicious treatment of the corpse points out more to a jealousy rage than a homophobic crime. Read me out, before passing around the torches.
It is plausible that he knew from the beginning that he was picking up a boy in drag. It is even more plausible that it wasn’t the first time he picked him up. Maybe twisted feelings were developed in the process from the killer’s part. Or even worse, maybe he felt repulsion at those feelings brewing within him and decided to eliminate the source of them. The point is that the hate crime was one of passion; of not only a fag hater, but a self-hating fag.
And have no worry, his psychological makeup won’t allow him to confess to a crime of passion. He’d rather take the full penalty of the law for a hate crime than admit to the world that he is “less than a man.” Something he in turn will be turned into every time he drops the soap.
Ilustración por Xavier Pagán
