Stories
Angie Zapata
On July 16, 2008, in Greeley, Colorado, Angie Zapata, 20, was fatally beaten after her date discovered she was transgender. Her body was discovered on July 17th, by her sister. The suspect, Allen Ray Andrade, 32, beat Zapata with a fire extinguisher. Andrade admitted to police that he hit Zapata twice in the head thinking he had "killed it." He covered Zapata's body with a blanket and began collecting evidence to link him to the crime, and when he heard Zapata moving, hit her again, striking the final blow. Andrade fled in Zapata's car and was later found in a Denver suburb and arrested. He was charged with first degree murder and a hate crime. (The Associated Press, Colorado Man Charged in Transwoman's Slaying, July 31, 2008, online at 365 Gay; Dan Frosch, Death of a Transgender Woman is Called a Hate Crime, N.Y. Times, August 2, 2008, online at NY Times.).
On April 22, 2009, Andrade was found guilty on all counts, including the first degree murder charge and the hate crime charge. He was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole on the first degree murder charge. On May 8, 2009, Andrade was found to be a “habitual criminal” based on his six prior felonies and Weld County District Court Judge Marcelo Kopcow quadrupled the maximum sentences for the three other charges surrounding Zapata’s murder, including the bias-motivated crime charge, for a total of sixty additional years in prison on top of Andrade’s life sentence.