Harris County medical examiner teams with nonprofit to identify transgender, nonbinary crime victims

Iris Santos, a 22-year-old transgender woman, was shot to death in West Houston last year, one of at least 47 cases during the deadliest year on record for transgender individuals in the United States. While Houston police identified Santos as a woman in their reports on the case, the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences’ online database categorized Santos as “male” and listed her previous name based on what an institute spokesperson said was the information on Santos’ driver license. Santos would be furious about being misgendered, her sister Louvier Santos told the Chronicle last year. Gender identity is a relatively new discussion in the forensics community, according to Lee Bingham Redgrave, co-founder along with husband Anthony Redgrave of the Trans Doe Task Force, a national organization that assists with identifying LGBTQ+ crime victims and missing people.

If an individual is reported missing as male, but then found and classified as female, there can be additional challenges in identifying them. “We exist to work in those gray areas where things are not being compared that need to be compared to make sure that more identifications can be made,” Redgrave said. “It’s really not a political issue at all. It’s purely an issue of, we would like to see cases that tend to fall through the cracks be examined under a different sort of methodology.” On Tuesday, Harris County commissioners approved an agreement with the Trans Doe Task Force to assist with identifying crime victims, especially those who are transgender and nonbinary. The task force has worked on Harris County cases in the past, but the new agreement opens the door to assisting the medical examiner’s office on an ongoing basis, Redgrave said. The nonprofit organization will provide forensic genetic genealogy services at no cost to the county, according to the agreement approved unanimously by commissioners. They also will assist with “guidance throughout the media release process to ensure respectful language and representation of the identified individual.” The Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences declined to comment on the plan. Last year was the deadliest on record for transgender and nonbinary individuals, with at least 47 fatalities recorded across the country by the Human Rights Campaign, an organization that has tracked deaths of transgender and gender-nonconforming people since 2013.