Michelle Byrne
12 Jan 1987
Nashville, Tennessee (USA)
Tortured, beaten and beheaded
TDoR list ref: tdor.info/12 Jan 1987/Michelle Byrne
Michelle was tortured for several hours, beaten to death and beheaded by Kenneth Poole and Ralph David Frantzreb.
Construction worker David Frantzreb received an automatic life prison sentence yesterday when a Criminal Court jury convicted him of first-degree murder in the beating death of French-Canadian transsexual [woman] Michelle Byrne.
The jury of eight men and four women also convicted Frantzreb, 29, of "improperly disposing of a dead human body," a felony that carries a penalty of one to five years' imprisonment. Byrne's torso was pulled from the Cumberland River in March 1987, but her head, hands and feet have never been found. Frantzreb, a six-year Army veteran who formerly worked as a Tennessee prison guard, will not be eligible for parole, under current state law, until he has spent 19 years behind bars.
Frantzreb showed no emotion when he was convicted of the Jan. 12, 1987, slaying of Byrne, who had shared an East Nashville duplex with Frantzreb, two other adults and five children. The occupants of the house had met at the shelter which St. Patrick's Catholic Church maintains for homeless families.
Frantzreb had shed tears at times during his testimony Tuesday night, when he said he "just went off" when he learned that Byrne had "stolen" $175 which he had given her to apply to their rent. Frantzreb said he feared that he and his two children would be evicted drom the duplex, at 1012 Delmas Ave., where they had lived for three weeks after several months of sleeping in cars and living in a shelter for homeless people.
Frantzreb said he "did not intend to kill" Byrne. Frantzreb denied that he was affected by learning, a short time before he attacked Byrne, that she had been [assigned male at birth]e and she was actually the father, not the mother, of the 6-year-old son she had brought to Nashville late in 1986.
Frantzreb's attorneys, Assistant Public Defenders Pat McNally and Karl Dean, attempted to persuade the jury, in closing arguments yesterday morning, that Frantzreb was guilty of the lesser charge of second-degree murder, which does not involve premeditation. But the prosecuting attorneys, Assistant District Attorneys General Mark Beveridge and Owen Lipscomb, argued that Frantzreb had ample time to think about what he was doing to Byrne-as evidenced by the fact that Frantzreb and his housemate, construction worker Kenneth Poole, continued to kick and occasionally torture Byrne for several hours after Frantzreb's initial assault on Byrne.
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-tennessean-michelle-byrne-kenneth/123974139/
https://tennessean.newspapers.com/article/the-tennessean-michelle-byrne-kenneth/123974112/
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10_JeZ7LEIRhvewTCoL5mVkH6MQJzf7fSXl4-P6QJ0v0/edit#gid=0
