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How a WMass task force works to give cold case trans victims their names back
ORANGE — On the morning of Sept. 25, 1988, a man in Lake County, Florida, discovered the remains of a woman's body. Severely decomposed, the woman's skeletal remains were sent to the C. A. Pound Human Identification Laboratory on the University of Florida campus. It would be decades before the involvement of a group in Western Massachusetts helped uncover a key fact in the case: the woman's name. At the time, the laboratory observed that the woman was between 24 and 32 years old and would have stood around 5 feet, 10 inches tall with a robust build. She had silicone breast implants and scarring on her pelvic bone which, at the time, was thought to be an indicator of childbirth. Those remains, however, told investigators nothing about who Jane Doe was. Twenty-seven years later, in 2015, advances in DNA testing led to the discovery that this person had both X and Y chromosomes and was therefore a transgender woman. Jane Doe received a new nickname — Julie Doe, a moniker inspired by the 1995 film about drag queens, 'To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar.' A new artistic reconstruction was done. The sketch, released to the public in 2015, depicted a masculine face, someone with a chiseled jaw and prominent Adam's apple. 'The individual, while technically a very skilled artist, had clearly put some kind of bias in here about what he believed trans women would look like,' said Anthony Redgrave, co-founder of The Trans Doe Task Force. Redgrave works with his partner, Lee Bingham Redgrave, out of a third-floor office in Orange, in Franklin County. They founded the task force in early 2018 as part of a larger national nonprofit, the DNA Doe Project. They worked to spread awareness about Julie Doe's story, especially among the LGBTQ community. That meant revisiting what her forensic sketch looked like. 'That's the purpose of forensic art, to make people look longer,' Lee Bingham Redgrave said. 'It's to capture somebody's imagination, to make them think, 'Could I have known this person?'' The task force worked with forensic artist Carl Koppelman and in December 2018 a new sketch was shared to social media in a plea to determine Julie Doe's identity. The new sketch depicted softer, more feminine features. 'Somebody that you could look at and say, 'this is a face I want to keep looking at,'' Anthony Redgrave said. After more than three decades, in March 2025, Julie Doe finally had both her name and identity back: Pamela Leigh Walton. Officials are still investigating how Walton, who was born in Kentucky, ended up in Florida. The one-room office of the Trans Doe Task Force sits in the Orange Innovation Center, past the Orange YMCA, a Pilates studio and a laundromat. Inside, the walls are filled with newspaper clippings and before-and-after forensic sketches of victims — many of which were drawn by Anthony Redgrave himself. Red string connects cases on a wall-sized map. Anthony Redgrave is the team's lead forensic genealogist. He holds a doctorate of education in transformative leadership and has held trainings for the FBI and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, along with international organizations like the Australian Federal Police, Netherlands Forensic Institute and the Brazilian Forensic Identification Institute. The work of the task force comes at a time of uncertainty in the transgender community. President Donald Trump in January signed an executive order that bars federal funding to organizations that support 'gender ideology.' That has forced national databases like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to remove mentions in their public records if a person was possibly transgender. The executive order, issued the day Trump took office, declared that it is the policy of the federal government to only 'recognize two sexes, male and female.' However, the task force has continued to track that information. The Redgraves said the task force added 209 unidentified dead and 1,021 missing persons cases to its database in 2024. The cases were from more than 30 countries. Anthony Redgrave said the task force has a team of volunteers from across the country — and a few internationally — working to mine online databases to find missing persons and homicide cases that suggest a person could have been nonbinary or transgender. Those cases are then added to the Trans Doe Task Force's LGBT+ Accountability for Missing and Murdered Persons (LAMMP) database. 'A lot of skeletal remains are ambiguous,' Lee Bingham Redgrave said. 'A lot of cases, especially from the '70s and '80s and early '90s, need updated anthropological analysis and estimates. They need to have their sex estimates reevaluated. Julie Doe's case is a perfect example of why it's important to update your forensic estimates to not close any doors. This is how people fall through cracks.' 'I have no idea what my skeleton looks like,' said Anthony Redgrave. 'I don't even really entirely know what my chromosomes are doing. So, who knows how I would be categorized if I died, became a skeleton, and got lost in the woods.' Anthony and Lee Redgrave are both transgender men. Their volunteers are all transgender individuals, or trusted allies — often the parent or spouse of a transgender person. 'We want to assure our community that our cases are in the hands (of people) that they would trust,' Lee Bingham Redgrave said. 'We don't want them to have to trust us to trust them.' According to the Human Rights Campaign, 56% of violent crimes against transgender individuals in 2024 were targeted towards Black transgender women, and 38% of victims were misgendered or deadnamed by authorities or the press. The Transgender Day of Remembrance website, which tracks the number of instances of violent crimes against transgender individuals, reported 384 crimes in 2024. The number for 2025 is up to about 68. That number doesn't account for all of the people who may be wrongly gendered as male or female in national databases like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, according to the couple. When unidentified remains are analyzed, Anthony Redgrave said, the sex is just an estimation, a nuance that is often lost during a law enforcement investigation. In a statement issued to NBC News Washington, a spokesperson for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children wrote: 'We are responding to this direction in a balanced way, reviewing our publicly facing materials to ensure compliance while not impacting our 40-year mission of child protection.' Similarly, on the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System website, a message on the home page still reads: 'The Department of Justice's Office of Justice Programs is currently reviewing its websites and materials in accordance with recent Executive Orders and related guidance. During this review, some pages and publications will be unavailable.' Meanwhile, Lee Bingham Redgrave said the task force has seen some cases it has been monitoring disappear from the database. 'Some of them were later updated and reuploaded to make it look like they weren't transgender,' he said, 'but that's rolling back to where we started. When we started Trans Task Force, nobody was doing anything about missing transgender cases.' A local attorney said any steps to remove this information from databases poses hazards. Jennifer Levi, who is transgender and senior director of transgender and queer rights at GLAD Law (GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders), is challenging the Trump administration's ban on transgender people serving in the U.S. military for the second time. She was involved with the litigation against the first Trump administration's military ban in 2018. 'By turning transgender people into a political football, the administration is displaying callous cruelty toward some of our most vulnerable neighbors, friends, and loved ones,' Levi said. 'Purging key identifying information from missing persons databases — information that could help find missing children — is part of this broader attack and puts these community members at even greater risk." The Trans Doe Task Force is a nonprofit and is not federally funded, so its work continues largely uninterrupted. It has increased security, however, and the LAMMP database is now accessible only by request from law enforcement agencies and investigators. The couple also co-own Redgrave Research Forensic Services, in which they conduct in-house forensic investigative genetic genealogy testing. They do not directly handle DNA samples or evidence. Rather, they use genetic information from online companies like GEDmatch to help identify victims of violent crimes. 'DNA is the ultimate equalizer. That's a record that doesn't go away, as long as you capture it before everything's degraded,' Anthony Redgrave said. 'The nice thing about the digitizing of DNA is that you're capturing exactly all the information that's there at that moment in time. Even if things continue to deteriorate or just degrade, then you still have that information and it doesn't rot or get lost like paper.' For the couple, what's most important is making sure that nobody slips through the cracks. Lee Bingham Redgrave carries that reminder with him on his body, where all of his tattoos are memento of past cases. A tattoo on one arm reads 'John Doe' and the other, 'Jane Doe.' A double helix strand of DNA with 12 connecting rungs runs down his inner arm. Each of those rungs represent the first 12 cases that the Trans Doe Task Force solved in its first year of operation. The task force hasn't made much headway in partnering with Massachusetts law enforcement agencies, largely because it is a smaller organization, Lee Bingham Redgrave said. 'We have attempted to reach out on a number of occasions, and it seems that Massachusetts primarily wants to go with the much larger companies that are much more well-known,' he said. 'We're quite a bit smaller than some of the really large companies (out there).' That doesn't mean that the occasional Massachusetts case doesn't come across their desk. Such was the case with Benji Palmer, a transgender man who was found unresponsive at his Boston-area apartment in January 2021. Palmer (who used him/them pronouns) was an immigrant who sought asylum in the United States. The state Office of the Chief Medical Examiner was unable to locate his next of kin. 'If the (Massachusetts medical examiner) determines that somebody has been unclaimed for a certain period of time, what happens is a local funeral home will donate their time to come and transport the unknown person to a pauper's section of a graveyard or cemetery somewhere,' Lee Bingham Redgrave said. Pauper's fields are designated areas in graveyards and cemeteries where unclaimed individuals are buried. They are unmarked areas, and those buried in these fields do not have headstones. That's what happened to Palmer, Lee Bingham Redgrave said. He and Anthony Redgrave came across Palmer's case in a database of unclaimed persons, and upon examining his post-mortem photos, thought that he may have been transgender. 'Being transgender ourselves, you can just get a feeling about somebody,' Lee Bingham Redgrave said. '(Looking at them), you think, this person may have been gender variant in some way.' In this case, the task force dug through social media and search engines, and after some time, was able to locate Palmer's social media profiles, identifying their chosen name and their close friends. Lee Bingham Redgrave's efforts to inform the state's medical examiner of the task force's findings didn't go as well, however. 'I asked if she could tell me what cemetery they went to so that their friends could go and visit, and I was told no, that's not information that I can give you,' Lee Bingham Redgrave said. The medical examiner's office told the task force that it could only release that information to a family member, but because Palmer was both transgender and an Irish immigrant, it was possible they were estranged from their birth family. As a result, Lee Bingham Redgrave was unable to find a direct family member. According to Code of Massachusetts Regulations 505 CMR 2.00, an unidentified body is released to the Department of Transitional Assistance only after the medical chief has ensured that 'reasonable efforts have been undertaken to identify the body.' The chief must make a record of the person's characteristics through charting, photography, fingerprints and a dental examination. Instead, after some internet sleuthing, Lee Bingham Redgrave found the funeral home that would have likely handled Palmer's remains. He was able to learn where Palmer was buried — the Mount Benedict Cemetery in West Roxbury. 'We asked (the cemetery) if we would be allowed to use our own funds to place a headstone and we were told, 'no, that's not allowed,'' Lee Bingham Redgrave said. All the task force could do was to create an online memorial for Palmer on its website, which it did, under a new section of their website called community memorials. Palmer's memorial page shares where they are buried, including the GPS coordinates to the pauper's area of the cemetery. His close friends — Lee Bingham Redgrave said these were likely his 'chosen family,' nonbiological family relationships built through close ties and mutual support — came together to write Palmer's obituary. 'Benji was truly a generous, kind soul who wanted the best for everyone, even if it meant them sacrificing things for themself,' his friends wrote. One of Palmer's friends, Sabrina Hewitt, echoed those sentiments in a phone interview with The Republican. 'He made such an impact on my life, and I never actually got to meet him,' said Hewitt, who is transgender. Hewitt met Palmer online through a Facebook group that they co-moderated together, New England Transgender. It's still active today with a goal to provide support and resources for people who identify as transgender. 'He meant so much to me and to a lot of people. He was a really big part of the group, and he helped so much,' she said. 'To this day, I think about them now, and their soul is so pure. They were such a good person,' Hewitt still keeps the Facebook group active in Palmer's honor. 'I want his memory, I want every ounce of what he meant to people to be talked about because he deserves it,' she added. Solving decades-old cold cases isn't all the Trans Doe Task Force does. It has also established a database to help preserve peoples' information — especially that of transgender youth — before something might go wrong. The #IFIGOMISSING project is a self-submit database, where people are able to submit their names, pronouns, basic information and photos so, in the event that they do end up missing, their information would be used accurately. The project was inspired by the social media trend #IFIGOMISSING in 2023, in which thousands of people — especially transgender youth — were making videos on TikTok and other social media platforms using that hashtag. 'The kids started posting videos saying 'I'm not going to kill myself, I'm not suicidal, I'm not going to run away. So if I go missing, I want people to know this is my name. If I go missing, please don't use my dead name, please use this picture of me and not an old picture,'' Lee Bingham Redgrave said. Anthony and Lee are parents themselves. They have a transgender daughter who was a teenager when they first started the task force. 'We could only imagine if we were in a different state where there was this legislation starting to happen saying that parents could be criminalized, kids could be removed from their homes,' Lee Bingham Redgrave said. Because the #IFIGOMISSING database includes so many people under the age of 18, it is secured and cannot be accessed by the public. The information would only be used in the event that a person in the database went missing. On June 5, Anthony Redgrave will give a presentation at the Springfield Museums about LGBTQ+ cold cases. It comes at the start of Pride Month, which is observed in June to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall riots. 'We're here and we're approachable and anyone can ask us anything,' he said. 'If you're in law enforcement, if you have a relative who's in law enforcement, let them know we're here, and if you're a family member or a friend of a trans person, it's good to let them know that we're here. But also, for parents to know that we're basically filling in a gap that exists at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. If you have a missing trans kid, the NCMEC is not the place to turn right now.' 'We're not sanctuary cities': WMass mayors push back at feds over DHS target list Missing Chicopee kayaker found deceased, DA says; another man from separate Conn. River incident still missing Paper City Clothing Co. opens new location, saving historic Holyoke building OneHolyoke to host event on community challenges amid federal cutbacks Read the original article on MassLive.
Yahoo
2 days ago
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Zion Williamson accused of rape in bombshell lawsuit
Pelicans star Zion Williamson is being accused of rape by a woman claiming to be his ex-girlfriend. In a bombshell lawsuit filed Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court and obtained by The Post, the woman, identified as Jane Doe, alleges Williamson raped her twice in 2020. In one instance, Doe claimed Williamson, 24, arrived to the Beverly Hills home he purportedly rented while training during COVID on Nov. 23, 2020 and demanded sex. According to Doe, Williamson called her 'stuck up' and a 'bitch,' and when she refused to engage in sex, the 6-foot-6, 280-pound power forward 'pinned Plaintiff down on the bed with her hands behind her back and raped her.' Williamson is alleged to have taken her phone and choked her for 'talking too much' afterward. A second claim of rape occurred the following month, in which Doe spoke of potentially visiting a friend, leading Williamson to have allegedly 'picked her up, threw her down to the ground, and pinned her shoulders down so she could not move,' and then he reputedly 'violently raped Plaintiff in multiple ways.' She says he then took her phone and computer so she could not 'contact anyone to secure a ride elsewhere, report the assault, or seek medical care.' ESPN reported the accuser is seeking 'anywhere from $18 million to $50 million.' In a statement provided to The Post, Williamson denied the allegations through his legal reps. 'We take these allegations with the utmost seriousness, and we unequivocally deny them,' his reps said. 'The allegations contained in the complaint are categorically false and reckless. This is the plaintiff's third set of attorneys. This appears to be an attempt to exploit a professional athlete driven by a financial motive rather than any legitimate grievance.' Williamson acknowledged a consensual, casual relationship with Doe, and that she only began demanding 'millions of dollars' after their time together ended. He intends to file a counterclaim against Doe and will seek 'significant damages for this defamatory lawsuit.' 'While these allegations are false, we recognize the seriousness of the claims and welcome the opportunity to prove the truth in court,' his reps said. 'We are confident that the legal process will expose the truth and fully vindicate Mr. Williamson.' Doe's suit alleges a pattern of 'abusive, controlling, and threatening behavior toward Plaintiff' that also occurred in Louisiana and several other states. Williamson is also accused of threatening to have his security guard shoot Doe 'in the head while the security guard was present and carrying a loaded firearm multiple times in Louisiana between 2020 and 2023,' and 'threatening to have his paid security guard kill Plaintiff's parents, after informing Plaintiff that he knows their home address multiple times in Louisiana between 2020 and 2023.' 'Our client is very adamant about this — it's not her desire or our desire to litigate this case in the press,' Doe's attorney, Sam Taylor with the Lanier Law Firm, told The Post on Friday. 'It's a very serious case, as reflected in the allegations. Our client looks forward to her day in court where she can go and explain to a jury what happened to her, the things she endured for this defendant and getting justice.' Doe claims to have been in a 'dating relationship' with Williamson beginning around 2018 while he was a freshman at Duke, and the relationship continued through June 2023. Williamson went on to be the first overall pick by New Orleans in the 2019 NBA Draft. Despite an injury-marred start to his career, he made the All-Rookie team in 2020 and has twice been an All-Star in five seasons, all with the Pelicans. Williamson has made headlines over his personal life on a numerous occasions. In April, Williamson was dragged into a home invasion incident involving the mother of his child, Ahkeema Love, 31, who was arrested for attacking a romantic rival. Love was charged with home invasion, aggravated battery and stalking after she broke into an unidentified woman's residence and 'grabbed the victim's hair and struck the victim with keys clenched in her fist,' Kenner police said in a probable cause affidavit, per NBC News. Williamson was not named in the affidavit. Love was served an order of protection as part of her custody release following a bond hearing, according to court records. In 2023, adult film star Moriah Mills claimed she had an intimate relationship with the former No. 1 overall pick, and threatened to release alleged sex tapes of the two. In March, Love revealed she is pregnant and celebrating 'another addition to our family' in an Instagram post. She did not name the child's father. Love and Williamson welcomed a daughter in 2023.
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2 days ago
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Zion Williamson rape accuser seeking eye-popping $18 million to $50 million in bombshell lawsuit
The woman alleging Zion Williamson raped her is seeking 'anywhere from $18 million to $50 million' in the lawsuit filed Thursday in Los Angeles superior court, a source told ESPN. Williamson denied the allegations to The Post on Friday via his legal representatives. The woman, identified as Jane Doe in the lawsuit, claims to be the Pelicans star's ex-girlfriend, having allegedly started dating when Williamson was a freshman at Duke in 2018 until 2023. 'During the course of their relationship, Defendant engaged in a continuing pattern of abusive, controlling and threatening behavior toward Plaintiff,' the lawsuit reads, as obtained by The Post. 'His wrongful conduct occurred in Louisiana and continued thereafter across several states. The abuse was sexual, physical, emotional and financial in nature.' The lawsuit contains graphic details from a pair of 2020 encounters. Doe alleges in the lawsuit that she arrived on Sept. 23, 2020 to the Beverly Hills home that Williamson rented at the time and he requested sex. When Doe told the former No. 1 pick she was tired and wanted to go to sleep, he allegedly called her 'stuck up' and a 'b—h' and said she could not go to bed before sleeping with him. After she said no, the 24-year-old Williamson allegedly 'pinned Plaintiff down on the bed with her hands behind her back and raped her.' When Doe attempted to grab her phone, Williamson allegedly threw it across the room before choking her and yelling at her for 'talking too much.' A second alleged rape is claimed to have occurred roughly one month later on Oct. 10, 2020. Doe alleges to have told Williamson she wanted to visit a friend in San Diego and he said that she could not go while throwing items in the house. Williamson is then alleged to have 'picked her up, threw her down to the ground, and pinned her shoulders down so she could not move. Defendant violently raped Plaintiff in multiple ways.' Doe alleges Williamson then took her cell phone and laptop to prevent her from contacting anyone. The lawsuit alleges Williamson 'continued to abuse, rape, assault and batter plaintiff' in multiple other states until the relationship ended in 2023. Doe also claims Williamson threatened to kill her and her family, including an allegation of him threatening to pay his security guard to shoot her in the head and kill her parents. 'Our client is very adamant about this — it's not her desire or our desire to litigate this case in the press,' Doe's attorney, Sam Taylor with the Lanier Law Firm, said to The Post. 'It's a very serious case, as reflected in the allegations. Our client looks forward to her day in court where she can go and explain to a jury what happened to her, the things she endured for this defendant and getting justice.' Williamson's legal counsel said in a statement they plan to file a counterclaim against Doe and seek 'significant damages for this defamatory lawsuit. 'We take these allegations with the utmost seriousness, and we unequivocally deny them. The allegations contained in the complaint are categorically false and reckless,' Williamson's legal counsel told The Post. 'This is the plaintiff's third set of attorneys. This appears to be an attempt to exploit a professional athlete driven by a financial motive rather than any legitimate grievance.' The representatives added that Williamson has reported 'the plaintiff's extortion attempts to law enforcement' and allege that an arrest warrant was issued 'in connection with the report.' His representatives claim the two had a 'consensual, casual relationship' but never dated. 'That relationship ended years ago. At no point during or immediately after that relationship did the plaintiff raise any concerns. Only after the friendship ended did she begin demanding millions of dollars,' the statement provided to The Post on Friday read. 'While these allegations are false, we recognize the seriousness of the claims and welcome the opportunity to prove the truth in court. We are confident that the legal process will expose the truth and fully vindicate Mr. Williamson.' Williamson just completed his sixth season in the NBA — he did not play in 2021-22 — all with the Pelicans, and has struggled to live up to expectations due to injuries. He has played at least 60 games only twice, with the ex-Duke star appearing in only 30 games this past season. Williamson has dealt with off-the-court drama during his career. Adult film star Moriah Mills claimed in 2023 that the two had a relationship and she threatened to release alleged sex tapes featuring the pair. Ahkeema Love, the mother of Williamson's daughter, was arrested in April and charged with home invasion, aggravated battery and stalking after breaking into a woman's home and hitting her with keys, Kenner (La.) police said, as reported by NBC News. Williamson was not named in the probable cause affidavit from the incident.
Time of India
2 days ago
- Sport
- Time of India
New Orleans Pelican star Zion Williamson's r*pe accuser demands staggering amount in controversial lawsuit
Zion Williamson via Getty Images Pelicans' star Zion Williamson has become a hotbed of discussion across the globe for all the wrong reasons. He came under the scanner after being accused of sexually, emotionally, and financially exploiting and raping his ex-girlfriend Jane Doe back in 2018. According to the lawsuit filed by Doe, she has been demanding anywhere between $18 million and $50 million from the basketball star Zion Williamson in Los Angeles Superior Court. Pelicans' star Zion Williamson's accuser seeks for a whopping amount in the bombshell lawsuit The woman who brought New Orleans Pelicans star Zion Williamson into the spotlight for all the wrong reasons has been identified as Jane Doe. According to the lawsuit filed by Doe, she has been demanding somewhere between $18 million and $50 million in the sensational lawsuit. Based on a report by the reputed media outlet New York Post, Zion Williamson has straightaway denied all the allegations made by Jane Doe through his legal representatives. Williamson denied the allegations to The Post on Friday via his legal representatives. According to the lawsuit, Williamson dated Jane Doe from 2018 to 2023. Based on the New York Post, the lawsuit even mentioned 'During the course of their relationship, Defendant engaged in a continuing pattern of abusive, controlling, and threatening behavior toward Plaintiff. Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like 40대 이상이고 PC가 있으세요? 그럼 이 게임을 정말 좋아하실 거예요! Sea of Conquest 플레이하기 Undo His wrongful conduct occurred in Louisiana and continued thereafter across several states. The abuse was sexual, physical, emotional, and financial in nature.' The sensational lawsuit even mentions repeated sexual misconduct by the Pelicans' star Zion Williamson. During a recent interview with The Post, the legal representative of Jane Doe, Sam Taylor, spoke firmly about the lawsuit and even pointed out that justice should prevail with respect to the accuser, Doe. Taylor said, 'Our client is very adamant about this — it's not her desire or our desire to litigate this case in the press. It's a very serious case, as reflected in the allegations. Our client looks forward to her day in court, where she can go and explain to a jury what happened to her, the things she endured for this defendant, and getting justice.' Zion Williamson Accused in Bombshell Lawsuit Alleging Assault | DOUG GOTTLIEB SHOW Whereas during an interview with The Post, Williamson's legal counsel said the allegations made against the NBA star carry no weight and are baseless, he said- 'We take these allegations with the utmost seriousness, and we unequivocally deny them. The allegations contained in the complaint are categorically false and reckless. This is the plaintiff's third set of attorneys. This appears to be an attempt to exploit a professional athlete driven by a financial motive rather than any legitimate grievance.' With the upcoming NBA season just around the corner, Williamson is dealing with drama off the court and has been drawing negative attention towards himself due to the allegations made by his ex-girlfriend Jane Doe. Also Read: New Orleans Pelicans star Zion Williamson accused of r*pe and years of abuse by ex-girlfriend in Los Angeles lawsuit
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2 days ago
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Lawsuit pending against indicted former OPD officer
A former Owensboro Police Department officer who was indicted last year for allegedly sexually assaulting a woman is being sued by the alleged victim in Daviess Circuit Court. The suit was filed by 'Jane Doe,' who is only identified by her initials in the complaint, against former OPD officer Aleph Zavala and against OPD Chief Art Ealum. The lawsuit is currently winding its way through circuit court, with the last ruling occurring last month. The civil lawsuit is the second case Zavala faces. Zavala was indicted on charges of first-degree sodomy, first-degree strangulation and first-degree sexual abuse in connection with a Dec. 8, 2023 incident, where Zavala allegedly assaulted the woman, who was homeless, while she was staying overnight in a storage unit on West Parrish Avenue. The incident allegedly occurred after officers were called to the U-Haul storage facility to reports of a possible burglary. Reports regarding the incident say officers decided to let Jane Doe stay in the storage unit overnight. All of the officers left, except Zavala, who went back inside the unit and allegedly performed a sex act on the woman, attempted to get her to perform a sex act and choked her during the incident. Zavala's body camera was not in use during the time of the alleged incident. Zavala was fired by OPD in February of last year, after an investigation by the department's Professional Standards Unit. Zavala was indicted on the charges in May of last year. Zavala is currently scheduled to go to trial on the charges on Sept. 15. Zavala, who is out of jail on house arrest after posting a $10,000 bond, will next appear in court for a pretrial hearing in August. The complaint names both Zavala and Ealum in their official capacities with OPD. The complaint says the criminal charges against Zavala 'highlight the serious nature of the offenses against' Jane Doe, and also says the incident calls OPD into question. 'The incident also calls attention to the systemic failures within the Owensboro Police Department, specifically the failure to train and supervise on the part of (Ealum),' the complaint says. 'Such deliberate indifference in oversight and training directly contributed to the sexual assault of the plaintiff.' The complaint seeks compensation against Zavala for battery, negligence and gross negligence, and for 'failure to train and supervise' Zavala against Ealum. The complaint seeks compensation for physical and emotional injuries and punitive damages. The city is not representing Zavala in the civil suit, but did file a response regarding him because Zavala was being sued in his official capacity as a then-police officer. In the response, attorney Patrick Pace says while Zavala was working as an OPD officer on Dec. 8, 2023, the city 'expressly denies that Zavala was acting under color of law and within the scope of his employment with OPD during said incident.' Regarding the incident in the storage unit, the city's response says it admits Zavala went back inside the unit with his body camera off and and without informing dispatch, but says 'the city is without knowledge or information to form a belief as to the truth of the allegations' of the incident, 'and therefore denies same.' Regarding Ealum being named in the suit, Pace wrote in his response, 'The city denies the premise of the allegations ... and expressly denies that the alleged 'said failure to train and supervise his officers' occurred.' Pace wrote the city admits 'Zavala violated some OPD rules and standard operating procedures, but (the city) expressly denies that Zavala was acting within the scope of his employment' during the alleged incident. Zavala also filed a response through his attorney, Mary Sharp. Sharp wrote Zavala 'denies any allegations of misconduct as stated' in the complaint. Regarding the alleged incident, Sharp wrote Zavala 'maintains that no non-consensual actions occurred.' Sharp asked that the complaint against Zavala be dismissed with prejudice, which would bar the complaint from ever being raised in court again. The last action in the case was in April, when Daviess Circuit Judge David Payne denied Jane Doe's motion for summary judgment against Zavala. There are currently no hearings scheduled in the civil case.
