TDoR 1986 / 1986 / June / 30 / Tanya Moore


Tanya Moore

Age 31

30 Jun 1986
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (USA)
Beaten and shot

TDoR list ref: tdor.info/30 Jun 1986/Jonathan "Tanya" Streater

Tanya Moore
Tanya Moore [photo: www.buckscountycouriertimes.com]

Tanya was shot in the face, beaten and sexually mutilated by Donald Jennings along with Tina Rodriguez.

Both were burnt and their bodies were discovered in trash bags, with their legs sawed off above the knees.

1986: Two trans women brutally murdered:

The bodies of South Philly residents Tina Rodrigues, 27, and Tanya Moore, 31, were found July 3 in trash bags in a ravine off Trenton Road in Bucks County. Both of the trans women had been severely beaten, burned and dismembered, their legs cut off and one had been shot. The next month, investigators released the sketch of two men whose car passersby said the victims got into at 13th and Sansom streets. In December, U.S. marshalls arrested Center City cab driver Donald Jennings in Brooklyn on unrelated robbery charges, and identified him as a suspect in the women’s murders. It is unknown if he ever was charged in the case.

Both women were sex workers, and it is likely that they were murdered by clients.

Tanya Moore and Tina Rodriguez were two transgender friends working as [sex workers] on Philadelphia's thirteenth street in 1986. The pair disappeared on June 30, 1986 after getting into the car of a couple of clients. On July 3, 1986 their mutilated and dismembered bodies were found burning at a baseball diamond in Middletown.

After getting into a light medium-sized van with two male clients on June 30, 1986, the pair were never seen again. Other transgender sex workers describe the men last seen with the victims as being two white men between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five. The driver had curly dark hair and a mustache; the second suspect was blonde and clean shaven. At 12:31 a.m. on July 3, 1986, police and firefighters responded to the report of a brush fire; the Fairless Hills Fire Co. found two burning bodies instead. Through meticulous fingerprint analysis, hands cut off of the charred victims were matched with prison records by the FBI, both being identified as Jonathan Streater and Faustino Arroyo.

http://students673.ucr.edu/docsserver/lgbt/trans_remembrance_display_posters.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Tanya_Moore_and_Tina_Rodriguez

http://articles.mcall.com/1986-07-20/news/2541911_1_rubenstein-prostitute-victim

https://web.archive.org/web/20160308110902/http://articles.philly.com/1986-07-22/news/26095397_1_prostitution-charges-camden-previous-arrests

https://web.archive.org/web/20150913202220/http://articles.philly.com/1986-08-12/news/26066017_1_prostitutes-chitwood-white-males

https://web.archive.org/web/20150919065113/http://articles.philly.com/1986-07-22/news/26095685_1_prostitution-charges-chitwood-first-body

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10_JeZ7LEIRhvewTCoL5mVkH6MQJzf7fSXl4-P6QJ0v0/edit#gid=0

Report added: 24 Feb 2019. Last updated: 13 Jan 2021

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