Matthew Wayne Shepard was an American student at the University of Wyoming who was beaten, tortured, and left to die near Laramie on the night of October 6, 1998. He was taken by rescuers to Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado, where he died six days later from severe head injuries received during the attack.
Reginald Oliver Denny is a former construction truck driver who was pulled from his truck and severely beaten during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. His attackers, a group of black men who came to be known as the "L.A. Four", targeted Denny because he was white. The attack was captured on video by a news helicopter and broadcast live on U.S. national television.
Donnell Clyde "Spade" Cooley was an American Western swing musician, big band leader, actor, television personality and convicted murderer. In 1961 he was tried and convicted for the murder of his second wife, Ella Mae Evans.
Dominick John Dunne was an American writer, investigative journalist, and producer. He began his career in film and television as a producer of the pioneering gay film The Boys in the Band (1970) and as the producer of the award-winning drug film The Panic in Needle Park (1971). He turned to writing in the early 1970s. After the 1982 murder of his daughter Dominique, an actress, he began to write about the interaction of wealth and high society with the judicial system. Dunne was a frequent contributor to Vanity Fair, and, beginning in the 1980s, often appeared on television discussing crime.
Steve Brodie was an American stage, film, and television actor from El Dorado in Butler County in south central Kansas. He reportedly adopted his screen name in memory of Steve Brodie, a daredevil who claimed to have jumped from the Brooklyn Bridge in 1886 and survived.
James Wallace Langham II is an American actor. He is best known for playing the role of Phil the Head Writer on The Larry Sanders Show. He has also played the roles of David Hodges on the crime drama television series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and its sequel, CSI: Vegas, and NASA Administrator Harold Weisner on the Apple TV+ original science fiction space drama series For All Mankind. In the 1990s, he was well-known for playing Josh Blair on the NBC sitcom Veronica's Closet (1997–2000), which was a Top 10 hit in its first couple of seasons.
Jussie Smollett is an American actor and singer. He began his career as a child actor in 1991 debuting in The Mighty Ducks (1992). From 2015 to 2019, Smollett portrayed musician Jamal Lyon in the Fox drama series Empire.
The Wonderland murders, also known as the Four on the Floor Murders or the Laurel Canyon Murders, are four unsolved murders that occurred in Los Angeles on July 1, 1981. It is assumed that five people were targeted to be killed in the known drug house of the Wonderland Gang, three of whom—Ron Launius, William "Billy" Deverell, and Joy Miller—were present. Launius, Deverell, and Miller, along with the girlfriend of an accomplice, Barbara Richardson, died from extensive blunt-force trauma injuries. Only Launius' wife Susan survived the attack, allegedly masterminded by organized crime figure and nightclub owner Eddie Nash. Nash, his henchman Gregory Diles, and porn actor John Holmes were at various times arrested, tried, and acquitted for their involvement in the murders.
Lenford "Steve" Harvey was a Jamaican activist who campaigned for the rights of those living with HIV/AIDS in Jamaican society. In November 2005, he was abducted from his home and murdered in a robbery that some commentators believed was also a homophobic hate crime. Harvey, an openly gay man, had worked for Jamaica AIDS Support for Life (JASL), since 1997 becoming the group's coordinator for Kingston. In this position, he focused on distributing information and services surrounding HIV/AIDS to the most marginalised sectors of Jamaican society, among them prisoners, sex workers, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. In 2005, he was selected as Jamaica's project coordinator for the Latin America and Caribbean Council of AIDS Service Organizations. Harvey was praised for his work. According to Peter Tatchell of the British LGBT rights organisation OutRage!, "It is thanks to the efforts of Steve and his colleagues that many Jamaican men and women - both gay and straight - have not contracted HIV. They have helped save hundreds of lives."
Trev is a masculine given name, sometimes a short form (hypocorism) of Trevor or other names.
Totally Gay! is an American television special broadcast by VH1. The special premiered on August 18, 2003. It centrally focused on gay pop culture in the United States. The content of the show included sitcoms, gay icons, and the most popular dog breed (pug).
Nicholas Samuel Markowitz was an American teenager who was kidnapped and murdered at the age of 15 after a feud over drug money between his half-brother Benjamin Markowitz and Jesse James Hollywood.
Michael J. Sandy was a man from Brooklyn, New York, who died after being hit by a car during an attempted robbery. His assailants admitted that they planned their robbery because Sandy was gay.
Salvatore Joseph Guarriello was a member of the City Council of the City of West Hollywood, California. He was elected to the City Council in 1990, and reelected four times. He served four one-year terms as mayor. He was an advocate for West Hollywood residents, protected tenants of low-income housing, promoted West Hollywood's businesses, and upheld public safety.
Catherine Share is an American criminal who is known as a former member of the Manson Family; she was convicted of witness intimidation in relation to the 1970 trial of the Tate-LaBianca murders. In 1971 she was convicted of armed robbery and served five years. Share was not directly involved in the Tate-LaBianca murders, for which Charles Manson and some of his followers were convicted and originally sentenced to death. She served 90 days for witness intimidation.
The history of violence against LGBT people in the United Kingdom is made up of assaults on gay men, lesbians, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex individuals (LGBTQI), legal responses to such violence, and hate crime statistics in the United Kingdom. Those targeted by such violence are perceived to violate heteronormative rules and religious beliefs and contravene perceived protocols of gender and sexual roles. People who are perceived to be LGBTQI may also be targeted.
The history of violence against LGBT people in the United States is made up of assaults on gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender individuals (LGBTQ), legal responses to such violence, and hate crime statistics in the United States of America. The people who are the targets of such violence are believed to violate heteronormative rules and they are also believed to contravene perceived protocols of gender and sexual roles. People who are perceived to be LGBT may also be targeted for violence. Violence can also occur between couples who are of the same sex, with statistics showing that violence among female same-sex couples is more common than it is among couples of the opposite sex, but male same-sex violence is less common.
"Knockout game" is one of the names given in the United States for assaults in which a person attempts to make an unsuspecting victim lose consciousness with a single sucker punch. The assaults have similarities to the happy slapping trend seen in Europe, in which camera phones are used to record assaults. Other names given to assaults of this type include "knockout", "knockout king", "point 'em out, knock 'em out", and "polar-bearing" or "polar-bear hunting". Serious injuries and even deaths have been attributed to the knockout game. Some news sources report that there was an escalation of such attacks in late 2013, and, in some cases, the attacker was charged with a hate crime.
On January 29, 2019, American actor Jussie Smollett approached the Chicago Police Department and reported a hate crime that he had staged earlier that morning. He planned the fake hate crime with two Nigerian-American brothers, Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo, who had worked as extras on the set of television drama Empire, in which Smollett was a cast member. During the staged attack, which took place on East Lower North Water Street in Chicago's Streeterville neighborhood, the disguised brothers shouted racial and homophobic slurs while one poured bleach on Smollett and the other placed a noose around his neck. In addition to falsely reporting that he had been attacked by two unknown individuals, Smollett described one of them as a white male. He also told police the men shouted "This is MAGA country" during the attack, a reference to the Trumpist political slogan "Make America Great Again". The brothers later testified that Smollett staged the attack near a surveillance camera so that video of it could be publicized.
