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Brutal murder of Missouri trans teen won't be treated as hate crime

Ally Lee Steinfeld, a transgender teen from rural Missouri, died a brutal death, apparently in cold blood.

Some of her remains were discovered more than a week ago in a plastic bag stuffed into a chicken coop near a trailer in Cabool, a town in southern Missouri. Seventeen-year-old Steinfeld’s genitals had been slashed and her eyes gouged out, according to local news reports. Other remains were discovered in a burn pile.

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Prosecutors announced Wednesday that her death was not a hate crime.

Authorities have charged two men and two women in connection with Steinfeld’s death: Briana Calderas, 24, Andrew Vrba, 18, and Isis Schauer, 18, were charged with first-degree murder. James Grigsby, 25, faces less severe charges linked to allegedly abandoning a corpse and tampering with evidence. Police reports were not immediately available. All four suspects are being held without bail.

On May 24 of this year, Steinfeld — born Joseph Andrew Steinfeld Jr. — announced on Instagram that she was coming out as transgender. In a post on June 13, Steinfeld described herself as “Trans male to female and I am mostly lesbian but pansexual.” “I am proud to be me I am proud to be trans I am beautiful I don’t care what people think,” she wrote in another.

She’d been living with Calderas— whom she was dating — in a trailer in Cabool when she was reported missing by her family on Sept. 14, Steinfeld’s mother, Amber, told the Associated Press.

Vrba had initially tried to poison Steinfeld, he reportedly told police, but she refused to drink the liquid, so he stabbed her instead. Police found blood on the living room carpet. Vrba also told the police about how he’d bragged about killing Steinfeld to his friends, offering up gruesome details about how he’d mutilated her body.

“You don’t kill someone if you don’t have hate in your heart,” said James Sigman, the sheriff in Missouri’s Texas County. “But no, it’s not a hate crime.”

Prosecutors have also appeared to struggle with the line between a first-degree murder and a hate crime. “I would say murder in the first-degree is all that matters,” prosecutor Parke Stevens Jr. told AP. “That is a hate crime in itself.”

Steinfeld was the 21st transgender person killed in the U.S. since the start of 2017, according to Human Rights Campaign. In 2016, 22 transgender people were murdered.