Jae Stevens

Location: San Francisco, California
Cause of Death: Five stab wounds, three directly to the heart.
Date of Death: June 24, 1974
Source: Drag Magazine, Volume 4, Number 16

Jae Stevens: 1974, Contemporary

Sometimes when you look into the past, you find tales that echo events of today, such as the case of the murder of Jae Stevens.

Stevens, born in 1947, was an accomplished drag performer in San Francisco, having started her performing career in 1967, at “The Fantasy,” a club that was then on Mason Street. She then went on to the famed Finocchio’s club and played the cabaret circuit in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

She seemed well-loved by her SF peers, who spoke of her, in memory, as a good friend, with a “great ability to find humor in any situation.” A good example would be when, in 1970, she attended a gala charity benefit in drag, and won the grand prize in a contest at the event, only them revealing herself to be a female impersonator. This, as was reported, upset “the socially prominent judges no small degree.”

On the night of June 24th, 1974, a resident from near Golden Gate Park heard cries for help, and the morning of the 25th, Jae’s body was discovered near Spreckels Lake. She had been stabbed five times, three of which went directly into her heart.

Two hours before the body was found, a suspect had been seen driving Ms. Stevens’ car in Hayward, in an area then known for a high incidence of rape attacks. The suspect escaped, after crashing the car into a house. I was unable to find any information that would lead me to believe that any suspect was ever caught and tried.

How is this story comtemporary? As of this writing, another transperson has recently passed on in Austin, Texas, of multiple stab wounds. Others have died in Boston, and California, in the same pattern. And police are still not finding our murderers. It seems to be an established pattern, spanning from at least 1974 to the present.

This pattern needs to break. Not just for the Brandon Teenas and Rita Hesters with whom we are familiar with today, but for the Jae Stevens and others in our past.

Quotes from Drag Magazine, Volume 4, Number 16, from the permanent collection of the GLBT Historical Society of Northern California.

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.”

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