Pillar Point Doe
Age 19-2526 Nov 1983
Half Moon Bay, San Mateo, California (USA)
Beaten, stabbed and strangled
The body of Pillar Point Doe was found on Lower Pillar Point/Ocean Beach on the morning of 26th November. They had been stabbed, beaten, and strangled hours beforehand.
Investigators theorised that they may have been picked up in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco by a group of individuals who attacked them once they discovered they were not a cisgender woman. Two men were identified as persons of interest in the case but were never charged due to lack of evidence.
The Trans Doe Task Force recommended this case to the DNA Doe Project, and they took on the case, a a result of which the victim's DNA was sequenced (see https://www.facebook.com/DNADoeProject/photos/a.2011996032392505/2254672421458197/?type=3&theater). Please follow and like the DNA Doe Project Facebook page for updates on this case.
On a November morning in 1983, a body was found on Pillar Point Beach. It was the battered corpse of a young transvestite who police suspected was brought over from the Tenderloin neighborhood in San Francisco. He wore yellow, knee-length pants, a multicolored turtleneck, beige lingerie and a white, metal crucifix around his neck.
[They] became another John Doe. The investigation ran dry and the case was never solved. Now the facts behind the apparent homicide rest among other Coastside cold cases at the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office on Tower Road.
A Reddit comment by the user Puremisty says more than we ever could:
If Kat (that’s what I’m calling her) was from San Francisco then anyone who could identify her may have kept silent out of fear of being attacked for associating with a person who just so happens to be trans. A lot of violence dealt to [transgender people] often goes unreported out of fear of being further attacked and the 1980s was no exception. It’s only been relatively recently that this violence against the trans community has become better known as more people find the courage to report what happened to them.
If Kat was trans then she may have been the victim of a hate crime. I think we need to find any biological relatives of hers or else possible friends and I think the best way to get her face out there is by YouTube. Her story and Julie’s, a trans woman found in Florida, needs to be told so we can identify them and so they can be buried by the people that loved and cared about them. Like I said in the post about Julie, no person, trans, gay, bi, pan, demi, ace, gender fluid, straight, cisgender, and/or non binary, deserves to be forgotten. They all had families, whether biological, step or those they created, who cared about them and all these does deserve to be buried with the names they went by.
In October 2019, Pillar Point Doe was identified by the Trans Doe Task Force and this information passed to the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office. So far the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office has declined to allow their identity to be publicly released by the latter as the investigation into their murder is still open.
Like Julie Doe and Live Oak Doe, Pillar Point Doe's death is not recorded by https://tdor.info in their archive records of transgender murder victims.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3vgzw/meet-the-genetic-sleuths-solving-decades-old-trans-murders
https://web.archive.org/web/20200201191145/http://transdoetaskforce.org/?p=159
https://www.facebook.com/DNADoeProject/photos/a.2011996032392505/2254672421458197/?type=3&theater
https://www.namus.gov/api/CaseSets/NamUs/UnidentifiedPersons/Cases/10528/Images/34375/Original
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/773umca.html
https://www.namus.gov/UnidentifiedPersons/Case#/10528/
https://coroner.smcgov.org/john-doe-83-26-case-83-1063
http://unidentified.wikia.com/wiki/San_Mateo_County_Doe_(1983)
https://counteverymystery.blogspot.com/2018/11/november-26-1983-san-mateo-doe.html
https://www.namus.gov/UnidentifiedPersons/Case#/10528
https://coroner.smcgov.org/john-doe-83-26-case-83-1063
