The husband of murdered North Adams transgender rights activist Leigh Steele-Knudslien has pleaded guilty, the Boston Globe reported today. He received a sentence of life in prison with parole eligibility in 25 years.
Leigh, noted the Globe, “was a well-known advocate in the transgender community, helping to organize the first New England Trans Pride parade in 2008. Soon after that, she started a beauty pageant for transgender women in Northampton.”
On January 8, 2018, Boston Spirit reported that “Mark S. Steele-Knudslien, 47, has been arrested and charged with murder. He pleaded not guilty [the next day] in court, although he had gone to the Adams, Massachusetts police station Friday night, turning himself in and admitting to killing his wife.”
According to today’s report in the Globe:
Mark Steele-Knudslien, 49, pleaded guilty in Berkshire Superior Court to second-degree murder, Berkshire District Attorney Andrea Harrington’s office said in a statement.
Had Steele-Knudslien taken the case to trial and been convicted of first-degree murder, he would have faced a mandatory life term without the possibility of parole. So he accepted the offer to plead to second-degree murder, said his lawyer, Leonard Howard Cohen of the Pittsfield firm Cohen Kinne Valicenti & Cook.
Cohen declined to say whether Steele-Knudslien had expressed remorse for the killing.
Steele-Knudslien murdered his spouse on Jan. 4, 2018, in their North Adams home by stabbing her and striking her with a hammer, prosecutors said.
“I send my heartfelt condolences to those who loved Christa dearly and the entire transgender community who looked up to her as a leader,” Harrington said in the statement. “This is yet another horrific domestic violence homicide in the Berkshires. My office focuses on holding perpetrators of these crimes accountable and this sentence will keep a very dangerous person away from the community for years to come.” …
Days after Christa’s death in 2018, Lorelei Erisis, winner of the first Mass Trans competition, recalled her as a “hell of a diva” who loved interacting with others.
“She wanted transgender women to be out and proud and beautiful,” Erisis said in an interview with Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham. “She was fantastic, a hell of a diva. She was a connector. . . . She enjoyed reaching out, and making social circles.”
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