Brandon
(aka Brandon Teena, Tenna Ray Brandon, Teena Brandon)

Location: Humboldt, Nebraska
Cause of Death: Shot to death, then stabbed, by John Lotter and Marvin Thomas Nissen.
Date of Death: December 31, 1993
Source: Omaha World Herald, January 9, 1994, amongst others.

Remembering Brandon

On December 31, 1993, John Lotter and Marvin Thomas Nissen murdered Brandon, Lisa Lambert, and Philip De Vine in a farmhouse in rural Richardson County, Nebraska. These multiple murders occurred one week after Lotter and Nissen forcibly removed Brandon’s pants and made Lana Tisdel, whom Brandon had been dating since moving to Falls City from Lincoln three weeks earlier, look to prove that her boyfriend was “really a woman.” Later in the evening of this assault, Lotter and Nissen kidnapped, raped, and assaulted Brandon. Despite threats of reprisal should these crimes be reported, Brandon filed charges with the Falls City Police Department and the Richardson County Sheriff, however, Lotter and Nissen remained free. Lotter and Nissen have both been convicted; Lotter is currenlty on death row and Nissen, who testified against Lotter, was sentenced to life without parole.

Brandon was a female-bodied twenty-year-old who passed, to some extent, as a man, without hormonal or surgical intervention. Given the name “Teena Renae Brandon” at birth, Brandon used a number of different gender-neutral and masculine names. Upon first arriving in Richardson County, Tenna Ray Brandon said it would be easier to be called “Brandon”. Although “Brandon Teena” has become codified as the name with which to refer to Brandon, there is little evidence for Brandon’s own use of this name.

Trans, lesbian and gay, and mainstream media have been interested in this case. It received coverage and analysis in many newspapers, and in publications such as The FTM Newsletter, Transsexual News Telegraph, TransSisters, Transgender Tapestry, The Village Voice, The Advocate, Girlfriends, Playboy, The New Yorker, and GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies. Aphrodite Jones wrote a true crime book, All S/He Wanted, about Brandon’s life and death. Independent filmmakers Susan Muska and Greta Olafsdottir’s documentary The Brandon Teena Story is currently on a theater run in the United States. The Guggenheim Museum commissioned Shu Lea Chang’s web-based art installation project Brandon. A novel by Dinitia Smith, The Illusionist, bears a striking resemblance to the story of Brandon’s life and death, although the novel includes the customary caveat that any resemblance to real persons is unintended. Several mainstream filmmakers, including Diane Keaton, have explored possibilities for a feature-length movie based on this story.

The murder of Brandon was a catalyst for mid-1990s trans activism, especially for the rise of Transexual Menace to national recognition in the United States and for the increased participation of ftms in U.S. trans activism.

Copyright 1999, C. Jacob Hale. Used with permission.

Since the above writing, a major motion picture titled “ Boys Don’t Cry” has been released.

Do you have more information on this person that you would like to see here? If so, please write to gwen@gender.org, with a subject line of “remembering our dead.”

Return to the previous page