A Rage To Kill And Other True Cases

to ask them.
    And so occasionally, Brad Bass had gone to prostitutes. He could be sure that they wouldn’t turn away when he talked to them. Later, Dalton estimated that Brad might have sought out a prostitute about every two months, and Brad had told him he’d only been with the ladies of the downtown Seattle streets three times. He was not the first young man to seek out such company, and he surely will not be the last. Despite his imposing build, Brad, was somewhat naive and inclined to believe the best about people. He thought the women really liked him.

    “Jackie” Emerson had yet to get his GED, and he bemoaned that fact. “I have a natural ability in hair, makeup, and clothing design,” he bragged. “The only thing that keeps me from it is I need a GED. When I set a goal, I stick to it.”
    But Jackie had not stuck to any educational goals at all. He was more interested in changing his gender at all cost. He had had many chances to work toward his GED, and he hadn’t taken them. He had his head in the clouds about being a wealthy designer and he couldn’t lower himself to get a high school certificate. First, he would have his surgery and that would make him a complete woman.
Then
he would become famous doing what he liked. But Jackie’s dreams had no grounding at all in reality.
    Although he worked as an aide at a Seattle nursing home, he wasn’t paid nearly enough to afford an operation to change the mistake he felt nature had made. He was not a valued employee—not even in a job he felt was beneath him. “Her quality of work and attitude are poor,” a supervisor wrote on Jackie’s evaluation. The nursing home managers recalled that she bristled at any “constructive criticism” and resented having to show her identification that gave her true name and Social Security number. But they didn’t know Jackie’s deepest secret. Since he had been hired as a female, his reticence was understandable.
    Jackie had long since left Yakima behind, working briefly in Seattle, and traveling on to Los Angeles, where he had no work—not officially, at least. “Jackie” was working as a prostitute in the guise of a woman. He found a doctor there who gave him female hormonal therapy with prescriptions for 100 milligrams of stilbestrol. In 1974, he visited Tiajuana, Mexico, where he received silicone enlargements of his “breasts.” He paid three hundred dollars for three treatments, but only took the first one. All he got for his money was one injection that settled into a hard lump within a day or so. That frightened him, and he didn’t go back.
    Moving back to Seattle, Jackie Emerson again started stilbestrol therapy, but he felt cheated. “That doctor was watering the pills down,” he complained.
    Jackie not only had a problem with his female hormone therapy, he also had a problem with drugs. By 1974, he was hooked on heroin. He was “strung-out” for a year, and needed sixty to seventy dollars a day to take care of his habit. He had tried amphetamines and barbiturates, but they never had the power over him that hero-in did. He also used marijuana and alcohol, although Jackie didn’t feel those were a serious complication in his already murky life.
    Jackie Emerson did not consider himself a homosexual; he continued to insist that he was a woman in the wrong body. He applied for public assistance—and received support—as “Miss Emerson.” Jackie, who had a rap sheet as long as his arm, was a highly skilled con man. Welfare workers didn’t know about his criminal activities; they saw only a confused and tearful boy/girl who didn’t seem able to face life or employment because of her unfortunate sexual situation. The State of Washington paid for extensive dental work for Jackie, and for an operation that removed an undescended testicle. “It is hoped that this corrective surgery will aid in the rehabilitation for Miss Emerson. She seemed hopeful and optimistic,” a naive caseworker noted in 1974.
    However, Jackie could not see “herself” in a job until she had undergone a complete sex change operation. “I can’t get a job,” he lamented. “I can’t pass the physical.”
    Jackie Emerson told a psychiatrist about his sad life, apparently unable to see that he had any responsibility at all for the troubles he had encountered. Emerson’s only income for four years had been through prostitution and welfare, and he had been jailed thirty or forty times in California, the last time