Shelby Tracy Tom, born 1963, was a transgender woman. She worked as a sex worker in Vancouver.
She was described as beautiful and kind. Shelby also completed a degree in History, so she could leave her job as sex worker and become a social worker to help others like herself. Her family stood behind her and supported her with love.
On May 27, 2003, a man named Jatin Patel met Shelby in a night club where he offered her 400$ for sex. When Patel performed oral sex on her, he noticed her gender confirmation surgery and became enraged. He strangled her and hid her body in a closet. Then Patel went and found another woman to have sex with. He shared the woman about his crime and spoke off how he would ‘dump’ the body by throwing it in the ocean, burning it or chopping it up. Still, Shelby’s body remained in the closet for 3 days until Patel covered her body with a mattress and left it in a shopping cart behind a dry cleaning establishment. Her body was found 4 days later on May 31.
On July 26, 2005, the Supreme Court rejected the thought that the murder of Shelby Tracy Tom was a hate crime. As Patel did not know she was transgender, and that resulted in his anger and violent behavior. Patel’s defense was that he felt betrayed by Shelby and violated which caused him to suffer from PTSD. Patal was sentenced to 9 years in jail but ended up only serving 4 years. He recently was deported from the United States. Sadly, Shelby’s murder was ignored and she never had justice.
This is an awful story. I just looked him up and saw that he has been put away for life for sexually assaulting a teenage girl. I hope that’s true that he’s gone away for good. This was a horrible crime.
Terrible. Should have got life this guy
