A jury in southeast Iowa’s Lee County spent less than two hours in deliberation today before finding a man guilty of first-degree murder in the 2016 killing of a gender-fluid teen.
Des Moines County Attorney Amy Beavers said 23-year-old Jorge Sanders-Galvez helped another man kidnap and suffocate 16-year-old Kedarie Johnson in Burlington. “The malice in this crime was extreme and the jury obviously saw that again as we saw it. And to have them agree with us, with murder in the first degree, with the defendant going to prison for the rest of his life, is clearly warranted in this case,” Beavers said.
The other defendant in the case, Jaron Purham, was also charged with first-degree murder and will being tried separately.
In closing arguments, prosecutors said Sanders-Galvez and Purham killed Johnson because they discovered he was biologically male during a sexual encounter. Johnson was dressed in women’s clothes the night he was killed.
(Thanks to Katarina Sostaric, Iowa Public Radio)