Episode 40. The Murder of Nikki Kuhnhausen: A Discussion on Transphobia, Disclosure, and the Importance of Justice

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This podcast is part of the Deluxe Edition Network. To find other great shows on the network, head over to deluxeeditionnetwork.com. That's deluxeeditionnetwork.com.

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stating, it is something that everyone does. It is something that we should be able to do and be safe as we do it. However, do we put ourselves in danger when there is things that we choose not to disclose, even if we feel or know that maybe we should? Join me as I examine the case of the murder.

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of Nikki Kuhnhausen on this episode of True Crime and Authors.

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What's going on everybody. Welcome to another episode of true crime and authors. Of course, I'm your man, David McClam. Hey, if you haven't already, make sure that you are checking this out on all of our socials. One link to a link tree in the show notes will get you every link you need to have to the show. All right, before we begin today, just a couple of things I wanna share with you guys off the top.

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As I've mentioned before, season one is quickly coming to an end. There's been some things I've thought about over the whole entire first season of doing this show, and I am here to announce that I will be making a change in season two. So in season two, I'm going to rename the show. Now I won't tell you what the show will be renamed. It would be something close to what it currently already is, but I need to

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can make sure the title of the show is as accurate as it can be. As you know, towards the middle of the season, I introduced you to the extraordinary person segment. Well, I'm here to announce that that segment is going to stick around permanently. So it will no longer be a bonus episode. It will be a regular episode. And so I will give you true crime, author, extraordinary person in the new format that we will have.

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in season two. So hope you guys are looking forward to that. My other announcement is I can finally tell you the other project in which I am currently working on. I already told you that I am in the process of writing a book and that there was another project that I couldn't share at that time. Today I'm here to share that with you. During this experience I have made some good friends, some for life.

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And together we are going to bring you guys a brand new podcast coming soon called legends in blue. I spend a lot of time telling you about the bad things that cops have done, but we know that there are some great cops out there, some that has given their lives for the right reason. And we do want to take time to talk about all of those good people out there that happens to wear the uniform and the badge.

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that is making sure that our lives is what they are supposed to be. So I'm looking forward to doing legends in blue with LaDonna Humphrey. We're going to tell you guys some fabulous stories. We're probably introduce you to some detectives you guys don't know about. And I'm looking forward to bringing that. So I hope you guys will tune in for that. And one last thing I want to thank you guys for everyone that has left me a comment.

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and a rating, I read them all. Right now I am carrying a straight 5.0. I could not do that without you guys. So once again, thank you for tuning in every week. I really greatly appreciate it. So today's case is a controversial one. You will find out why that is as we go along with the case, probably within the first few minutes. I will say this is to probably give it away, just in case you are sensitive to this.

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This does deal with the murder of a transgendered person. It is a case that needs to be talked about. And we need to have a conversation around that because there's some stigmas and I think that some people are labeled wrong. So I'm bringing you this case because it needs to be done. And we will have a discussion about this at the end. And hopefully we can stop these things from happening.

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So today's case is the murder of Nikki Kuhnhausen. I have been sitting in this case for a number of weeks. I've done a lot of research into it. You have to piece a lot of things together. I didn't find really one article that kind of put everything together, but I think I found one that was close. If you're looking for it, there is, strangely there is no Wikipedia at all on this case with all of the information that is going around. So let's jump in.

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to it. The article that I'm using is the Cinemaholic and I will leave a link to that in the show notes. In June 2019, a beloved teenager, Nikki Kuhnhausen went missing after leaving home to meet a date. The desperate search for her ended about six months later when her remains were discovered in a remote part of Clark County, Washington. Both CBS's 48 Hours, The Life and Death of

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and Hulu's How I Caught My Killer, social media, yeah, it was her thing, delves into the motivations behind Nikki's death and how personal records proved instrumental in catching her culprit. So let's dig a little bit into that. That's just kind of the intro to that. I will fill in some gaps, because of course there is some, since I've been doing a lot of research on this. There is a law named Nikki's Law we will talk about. I will tell you why I do agree and disagree with that law as we get to the end.

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So let's find out exactly what went down.

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So Nikki was 17 years old and she was from Vancouver, Washington. She was a confident, self-assured teen. She was loud and proud transgender girl and knew that from a young age, driving her to come out when she was in the sixth grade, she was quite close to her mother and always supported her. At the time of the incident, Nikki lived at a friend's place in the local area, but she left home to meet a date she met online during the late hours of June 5th.

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of 2019. Nikki's friends last saw her alive around 5am on June 6 when she was at a friend's house before heading out again. The 17-year-old was reported missing the same day when loved ones couldn't get a hold of her and even her social media platforms showed no signs of activity. After all, she always shared her experiences with friends, family, and followers alike

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and thus had thousands of supporters online. About six months later in December, a hiker found a human skull in a wooded area. Now let's stop right there because I wanna address the controversy that's already happening just from that little piece that Nikki was 17 years old. If you watch any of the documentaries that I mentioned, CBS or Hulu, the mother kinda got a brow beating.

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I'm not one for beating down, you know, victims, parents and things of that nature. But sometimes this has to be said because the sentiment was why was Nikki 17 and allowed to be gone without telling anybody? Cause from all accounts I read, she was free to go where she wanted to. She didn't have to tell anybody. People just assumed that if Nikki was not at home or where she was supposed to be at the time or whatever the case was.

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that she was cool, she was at somebody's house, she was hanging out with a friend, all of that. And that assumption proved to be wrong this time. So I'm just saying as parents, when I was 17, I couldn't leave my house without my mom knowing where I was going, who I was with, what the phone number was if there was one, when I was going to be home. I went home at 30 years old, same deal. Okay, I never left my mom's house, no matter how grown I was without saying,

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Here is where I am. Here is where I'm going to be, just in case something goes down. So I think we do have to kind of look at that. So what happens from that point is about six months later in December, a hiker found a human skull in a wooded area around Washington's Larch Mountain. Soon officials found more human remains and they were confirmed to be Nicky's based on the clothing and jewelry located. There was also a knotted phone charger cable near the body.

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confirming that she was strangled to death. So now let's talk about the man who's accused of this. And this is gonna go into why I agree and disagree with Nicky's law, which was basically abolishing what they call the Trans Panic Law. And I'll get into a little bit more with that is here in a minute.

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So it says the truth is that the dump site investigators have found hair extensions they believe to be Nikki's tangled up in the phone charger cable. A high-oard bone was also found within this mess of hair and wire. But before her remains was found, the authorities had already worked hard to identify the date she met. From Nikki's friends, they learned he was an older Russian guy, following which a look into her Snapchat account helped them identify him.

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as David bogged it off. Snapchat exchanges between the two showed they had plans to meet on the night of June 5th. However, despite the investigators' repeated efforts, they could only get a hold of David for an interview in October of 2019. At the time, he admitted to meeting Nikki and inviting her to join him and his brothers at a bar, only to later drive her to a friend's house to pick up her phone.

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He added that when they were in his vehicle outside his brother's house, she revealed she was assigned male at birth, following which he asked her to get out and she left on foot. Now I want you to remember that because that part right there is very important. It's important because right there, he admitted that Nikki revealed that she was assigned male parts, that essentially,

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She was a guy. I want you have to remember that part because as we go on, that's gonna come back. David stated that he was shocked, disturbed, and uncomfortable at the revelation, but still went about as normal. However, phone records placed him in the large mountain area during the early morning hours of June 6th. Furthermore, his car history made it clear he was looking for a sexual encounter on that fateful night.

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He was thus charged with murder with the prosecutors believing he killed Nikki in a fit of rage once they started getting intimate and he learned of her history, though at his trial in August of 2021, he claimed to have slain her in self defense. David actually testified that Nikki had lunged for a gun in the front of his car following the revelation and him asking her to get out. So he had to strangle her to protect himself.

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This was something he had not previously mentioned to the police officers. The prosecution claimed that David killed Nikki after finding out she was a transgender teen. In the end, the jury found him guilty of murdering Nikki and handed down a lengthy prison sentence. Now that's the end of the article. This is why I do all this research. Let's comb back through that because I want to tell you why you guys need to keep in mind that he said...

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that he invited her to the brother's bar where she told him she was transgender. Also wanna talk about why was the phone cord knotted? This also goes into the Nicky's Law. So I'm gonna tell you right here, right now, why the transphobic law does not apply to David Bogdanoff. And then later on, I'll tell you why I disagree.

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with the passing of Nicky's law that abolishes that. But first, let's go with this. What they kind of all skimmed over was that the lies that David Bogdanoff ended up telling. Now he said that outside his brother's house, she revealed that she was a sign male at birth, at which point he was shocked, disturbed, and uncomfortable, and at that revelation, he went on as normal, but asked her to leave.

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His story later changed though, when he was testifying in trial. In trial, he says, he did not know. Nikki was in his backseat and asked him to come back with her and they started to make out. It was during this time that he removed a gun that he was carrying on his hip and placed the gun in between his seat.

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in the little glove box that we all have in the middle. They began to make out, at which time he discovered by his own feeling that Nikki was a man. At which point he further goes on to say that he called her a bunch of disgusting names, said that he was disgusted by people like her, and names I will not even get into.

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And then at that point, he claims that Nikki went to launch for the gun that was in between his seat now, and at which point he had no other option but to defend himself. Then I guess at one point, Nikki had put her foot up against the door trying to push him away and all he could reach for was he saw his phone cord that he used to charge his phone.

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He took it, he wrapped it around her neck, and he strangled her in self-defense. So if you're like me, how many people are sitting there going, that's BS? These are the two stories that he told. First he knew, then he asked her to leave, then he didn't know until they were intimate. This is why, this is why the transphobic law does not apply to him. If you don't know what that law is,

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Let me tell you what that's about. And then I'm gonna tell you why I disagree with the abolishment of it. The transphobic law pretty much says that it's the same thing for heterosexual people. We have a law called the crime of passion law, which means that a killing that occurs under the heat of passion, and it is done without premeditation, and it essentially reduces the killing from murder to a voluntary manslaughter. So the transphobic law says the same thing, which is that

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You go out with somebody who is transgender, they never reveal this to you. Somehow you find out about this, you totally flip your lid and you end up murdering this person and then the transphobic law comes into play. In David's case, that didn't happen. I'll clearly tell you whether it happened. First of all, he gave you two stories. Second, he had time to think before he killed her. He told you that.

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After he found out, he called her a bunch of disgusting names. That is not flipping out because somebody reveals something that you didn't know. Up under that law, that means you flipped and you immediately, immediately proceeded to kill this person, choke this person, whatever it is you're going to do, because now you've lost your mind and you are in a state of being outside of yourself, that's where that comes into play. Now I understand.

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And I've had this come to my daughter who's my oldest daughter, who's in the LGBT community, that there are some people that will go out there and claim that they, you know, that they killed this person up underneath being shocked just so they can get away with murder. That's the first thing I do. Do you know people who go out there and claim that? Oh, okay. I get it. Yes, it happens. I told you, give it that just like under the crime of passion. There's some fools out there that's winning. They're just spraying the area and say, well, you know what? I called her.

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with the man in the bed and I'd have no reason and I just flipped out, even though you already knew this was going on for nine months. I get that. But there is things going around now that people need to be aware of. In a Nicky's case, this is not what happened because from the way things look, and even from David Bogdanoff's first story.

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We gotta take his first story, not the second. We gotta take the first one outside the brother's house when she told him he already knew. If that is the true story, the first one he told, he already knew before anything intimate happened, before they even held a hand, before they kissed outside his brother's house. She says,

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I'm actually born a male. I think David Bogdanov was curious. I think that he wanted to see if it was true, whatever the case was, they get in this back seat and he decides maybe he didn't want to do that anymore. He decides maybe it's testing his manhood. And unfortunately he takes Nikki out. That's what I think happened. I'm just going to call a spade a spade.

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If you go and look at the documentaries, you can tell he's lying through his teeth. When he's sitting down talking to the investigator at one point, after they start bringing out where they found her at and all this stuff that was there and what was happening in the whole nine, his next words were, I think we need a lawyer. So let me read it to you verbatim, but this is what actually happened to him. I'll give you the sentence. We'll get into a little bit about Nikki's law and I'll tell you where I stand because there's a conversation that I think that we all.

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need to have around this. And that's the problem I think between heterosexual and people who don't necessarily believe in being gay or transgendered and people that are. Is there is nobody sitting down having these conversations because everybody's afraid to offend somebody and everybody's afraid to be canceled. Here at True Crime and Authors, I read a lot of books. Every author that you heard me interview and everyone that you will hear me interview, I've either read one of their books,

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I'm in the process of reading one. So how do I keep up with all of the books that I read? Well, that is where the show's sponsor, Catch Creations 614, comes into play. Catch Creations makes digital handmade planners and journals. And for those who want something on paper, printables as well. She can make anything from My Little Pony to Black Panther. Anything that you can creatively think of, Catch Creations 614 can get it done.

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27 year old David Bogdanoff hit still trial for murder in August of 2021, where he took to the stand to provide a much different version of events. He admitted to having brief sexual contact with Nikki in the backseat of his car and said that at that point he found out Nikki was a transgender person. David then claimed he yelled at her to leave the vehicle, but Nikki allegedly went for the gun close to the driver's seat. So in the act of self-defense,

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David admits that he strangled her with a charging cord. Now, maybe I'm naive, but maybe you guys can answer this with me. If all he said to Nikki after finding out in the backseat was get out my car, why she gonna go reaching for a gun in his car where he wedged it close to him? You have to be looking for death wish that day because you have to think in your mind.

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What happens if this don't go right? What happens if I go grabbing for the gun and he takes it from me or I drop it from some of the transgender people? I know, I believe that if that happens, you now become very uncomfortable. And if this person is giving you a way out of the car, you ain't grabbing for nothing, but your purse bag, whatever you got with you and your next grab is for the handle door and you trying to get out. That's what I believe. The prosecution though.

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pointed to David's inconsistent statements. He never told detectives that Nikki had attacked him. He had also booked a one-way flight ticket to Ukraine on the day of the incident prior to asking a friend to get rid of his car. They claimed that David killed Nikki when he found out she was a transgender person. Again, the reason why TransPanic does not apply to him.

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As far as I can say, that's meditating. You killed her, now you booked yourself a one-way ticket to Ukraine. Told your friend, get rid of my car. You know what you did. And never mentioned to the police at all, Nikki tried to attack him. No marks on his neck, no marks on his arm, no signs of attack, no anything. And you don't mention that when you are getting interrogated. Which would be the first thing I'm yelling, hey, look, bro, she told me she was born a man.

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I told him to get out of my car and look at this mark right here. She attacked me on the neck. That never happened though. So ultimately he was found guilty of second degree murder and malicious harassment. In September, 2021, he was sentenced to 19 and a half years behind bars, the maximum as a first time offender. Therefore, according to prison records, David is currently incarcerated at the

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Coyote Ridge Corrections Center in Connell Franklin County, Washington. 19 and a half years because he's a first time offender and in Washington that is the match they can give him. I say not long enough. I would have given him at least a life sentence for what he did.

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I don't care as a first time offense. I get it, the justice go by the sentence and guidelines, but I'm tired of people getting off with crimes that they know that they're going to commit and they could have stopped their selves from doing. And you get this light sentence. Bogdanov is the true meaning of the word transphobic. And that's the conversation I wanna have around this is because there's a lot of people who's called me transphobic, gayphobic. I'm not phobic at all.

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But because of my stance or because of what I feel or because of what I believe, just because somebody doesn't believe in something that you do, or just because somebody don't agree with something you do, does not make that person phobic. Do we really know what the word phobic means? Because that word gets thrown around a lot in the LGBTQ community. And I'm not saying that there's people that it's not. There are certainly people that are just like David Bogdanoff. But you have to stop

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putting everybody in that bucket. If everybody wants to be accepted, that means that we all should be accepted for our ideals and our beliefs, no matter how different they are, no matter if you agree or not. That's what the world is built on, right? Isn't that what we want? Isn't that what black people saying? Isn't that what Asian people saying? Isn't that not what gay and trans people saying?

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We just want to be who we is, whether you agree or not, that allow people to have their beliefs. If their beliefs is wrong, they're gonna find that out towards the end. Just for knowledge, phobic means having or involving an extreme or irrational fear of or aversion to something. And then they give the example, she's phobic about spiders. Yeah, whenever I hear the name phobic, I think of arachnophobia.

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It means fear of spiders. I fear no one. I fear no person. That's why I bring you guys this case. I have friends that are gay. I have friends that are transgender. I have family members that are gay. They all know my position. They know where I stand. Who do you want to listen to? Do you want to listen to somebody that has real ideas, how they feel? This is their stance. Or do you want to talk to somebody and be friends with somebody?

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who all the time you look at them to make you happy, they changed their stance. Our whole country was changed at one time because somebody didn't have beliefs. Alexander Hamilton voted in Thomas Jefferson over Burr just because he felt like Burr had no beliefs. And no matter what he felt about Jefferson, no matter how much he didn't like him, no matter how much he hated them,

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He would rather vote him in office because at least he had beliefs, in my opinion. And I know there's a lot of people that's gonna disagree with me on this. My daughter did. And I'm gonna give you an example of why I feel this way. You have to tell somebody. Nikki did the right thing. And sadly, she still lost her life. They met up twice. There was no intimacy involved in the first meeting. None at all.

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There wasn't any on the second meeting either when she told him up until he decided to go back into the back after she told him because that's what I'm getting from here. But there is people out there that won't tell. It ain't their business to tell them. They don't need to know. All right, so I agree with you on this. Everybody don't need to know. I get that, all right. That's where you wanna be. You don't have to walk down with a billboard that says, hey, I'm a transgender person.

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I get that, but if you are going to be intimate with somebody, if you meet somebody today and you feel like, hey, I think that this is going to be a thing, you know, I really had a great time with him or her, I'm going to go back out with him again. I believe in that moment, you have to tell that person exactly who you are or were and what the truth is. There should be no secret. The transgender community is even saying that right now.

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I can port you to more than five videos that was made over the last past month of transgender people covered out saying, we have to tell people this is how this happens. We got to stop all these killings. There's a lot of other things that transgender people are saying too, that some people that in the LGBTQIA community don't like. And I told my daughter, I said, it's almost like the community's imploding itself. Well, it's not really imploding. Yeah, there's a lot of things going on in the transgender community right now that we won't get into.

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but those of you listening who's in the know, you know exactly what I'm talking about. But they're saying we've got to tell. One transgender female says I'm a transgender female and on all of my dating profiles, it is labeled right there that I am so that nobody has no excuse not to know. I can't tell y'all what to do, but I'm telling you, these murders, some of them, not all of them, can be stopped.

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If you don't feel like you can tell that person in person, maybe you need to do it over the phone. If you do it over the phone, you can hear in people's voices what way they gonna go. If the person is totally cool with it, oh, it's gonna be one tone. Be like, hey, let me just let you know I really like you. I just wanna let you know though that I am transgendered. I was boy or male. If that person, oh, all right, either I had an England or that's cool with me or let's see where it goes.

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But if you tell that person that same thing, hey, look, man, I was born a dude, and all of a sudden the voice dropped like, mm, really? And you just now telling me this now, you might wanna reconsider going back out with that person. There's a number of things that why I bring this up. If you guys don't know this, there's actually a group of transgendered females right now that is playing a very dangerous game.

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is all over YouTube, is all over TikTok. I watched a whole 45 minute video about this and I was like, why you wanna be dumb? So there is a group of transgender people, females, that is going around on TikTok trying to hook up with all people, of all people, rappers. And they're telling the story of how they're just going through clicking all these rappers' profile, hoping that they...

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you know, get their attention and one girl even said, yeah, I'm looking for this rapper. So maybe they can get with me and pay my bills. They're not telling these rappers though, that they're transgender. So now these rappers are going out with them and they end up doing things with them. And then it gets back to their transgender. Now we have a problem. There's a lot of rappers that is making videos on that right now. And there's a lot of them that said, if I would have known this is what was going on,

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I would have never went out with this person. And I don't know if I found out in the process of us doing something, what I would have done. They make this a game. And the girl is sitting there going, I'm nervous. I'm nervous because we gonna do this sexual stuff. And I'm afraid because everything don't look like, you know, don't look exactly like it probably will on a woman. I'm afraid he gonna find out. If you are afraid, why are you even putting yourself in that position? We have to stop these murders.

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some of these we can stop on our own. Let me tell you a story real quick of one that could have went real, real, real bad. And I still say that this person is extremely lucky because of the outcome that she had. And it could have went the other way. My daughter, my middle daughter, Madison, loves makeup. And because at the time that she discovered this person, Madison was all of about 17, 18-ish.

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loves YouTube. And so she will always bring me this phone, oh, look dad, look how she's doing the smokey eye and this is good, this is the bomb. And you know, I really love her channel. I'm like, that's good, you know, learning some makeup tips. The name of the person was Nikki Tutorials. Now at first look, did not know Nikki was a transgender person. Turns out, nobody else knew that either because she had transitioned

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when she was very young. So for the people that was meeting her now, she was a female. Nobody knew any differently. Even her best friend, she never told her best friend either that she was transgender. Here's where it could've went bad. So for what we don't want or who we change from, there's always somebody out there that knows our past.

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And if you get that white person that feels like they should be in your shoes, jealousy will rear is ugly head. Well, you're going to look up Nikki tutorials. Nikki made a big name for herself. She got big time contracts, Mabel, lean, you name it. She's probably did the makeup even to the point to where she even has her own makeup line.

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Nikki is worth millions of dollars. She's been on YouTube, I think, since she was 14. And she actually showed you when she went and bought her big old mansion over in the country that she's from, which I can't remember that. So this person decides, well, I'm jealous. So it's a good idea to out Nikki. Well, Nikki got word of that and Nikki took it.

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on her own and said, well, I'm gonna beat everybody to the punch. This happened about three years ago and she made a video call. I'm coming out in that video. She tells you that she was out it, that she was going to be out it, that the person already blackmailed her, that she felt like she needed to come out and tell you before everybody else, that it was something that she had not dealt with, she hadn't told anybody and I don't think she had planned to tell anybody.

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The problem with that is she had a long time boyfriend at this point, I believe about five years named Dylan. Dylan never knew. And I am, and somebody came to me and said, well, you know, if all these rappers is finding out surgery wise, how come he didn't? Well, for one, that's just something you just don't go looking for. Right? So when Dylan met Nikki, Nikki was a woman, Nikki was not a man. As far as body parts and all that stuff goes, Nikki didn't act like a man. Nikki didn't look like one.

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So he had no reason to question that. I probably would have never questioned that either. No reason to question it. Do I think that he should have been told yes? But now she's forced to tell him. It could have been real bad for Nikki. This dude's been with her for five years. They've been intimate for five years. This is a secret that you didn't tell the person that you say you love and wanna spend the rest of your life with.

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In my mind, I'm like, okay, dude, you couldn't tell me this. You know, I don't know what my feelings would have been. I don't have a choice. You ripped my choice away from me. Dylan could have flipped out. Dylan could have killed her. And I know as many of you guys have probably disagreed with me, probably would have used the trans panic defense. Would have been usable at that point because depending on how things went down,

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That's exactly what his attorney's gonna say. Your honor, he was with her for five years, never told him that she was transgendered. That is something my client should know upon finding out by somebody getting out her, he flipped out and killed her. He probably would have got off of the Transpanded Defense. Now that did not happen to Nikki's case. This is why I say Nikki was extremely lucky. Everybody's not gonna have the same fate though. What happened to Nikki and Dylan? Nikki and Dylan got married eight months ago.

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According to Nikki, they had their rough spots. They had their rough patches and then they worked it out and the whole nine and She posted her whole wedding on YouTube that though my friends has not happened into everybody, please If you are going to be intimate with somebody and you are transgendered in any sense of the word It is that man and or that woman's right

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this beforehand, especially if you still have your original equipment. I'm not saying that everybody is just going to jump up and not kill people because yes, there's trans hate, just like there's people that hate black people. Yes, there's trans people that get killed just for being trans people. There's gay people that get killed just for being gay.

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There's Asians that get killed just for being Asians. I know, because in my market, I pass by all the time with a big old mirror that says stop Asian hate. And there's definitely people that get killed just because they wear my skin tone of being black. But if we start by doing the right things first, that gives nobody any reason to say otherwise. There would be no reason for a trans panic law because people would know.

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What's going on? You cannot just take a man's manhood like that and expect to walk away. And that's what it is. That's what a man feels like. If a man feels like that he was not told and duped, he feels like you've taken his manhood. That's dangerous. I have about seven other cases on the book of where that happened. One where I've seen it on TV, it's one of the ID shows I was watching. Dew was with this transgender woman for seven months. They had never been intimate because she never wanted to because she knew

38:44
that she still had the original plumbing. She was urged by friends, hey man, you've been with this man for seven months. He don't like he play that kind of thing. You cannot let him find out on his own. Please tell him she didn't take his advice. So one day in the kitchen, while they're sitting there, they start to kiss and rub and all of that. And it got to the point to where she lost herself.

39:11
because every time they went to kiss and everything like this, she was making sure that his hands stayed above board, if you know what I mean. Well, they got a little carried away. She got lost in herself, I guess was feeling comfortable. His hand went down, discovered what he discovered, and he beat her right there on that sink. He went to court, they used a transphobic defense, and I think he...

39:40
got off of probation at that point because it was proven by a lot of people who testified, including her own friends, that she had been urged to tell him the truth. Not saying she deserved to die, not saying anybody does, but that's why these laws are on the books, just like crime of passion. If I walked into a room and found my wife and be with another man, I can just flip, pull my gun and start shooting them, they're gonna yell crime of passion.

40:07
So Nikki's law did get passed, at least in Vancouver. The bill had passed the House by 90 to five vote earlier in this month. And then on that day, it passed the Senate with a 46 to three vote. And somebody who was an activist said, the terrible truth is that vicious assaults have been perpetrated against transgender people as well as others in the LGBTQ community for far too long. And that was somebody by the last name of Cleveland says this bill is start.

40:35
It is long overdue and we must still do more. Not to minimize that, people, we've been going through this as black people for 400 years, and we still are. Nobody's given us any special laws to pass us either from getting killed. We get killed walking across the street, just like I'm sure transgender people do. But now this law takes away, at least in those states and cities that accepted it, it takes away the transphobic defense. So even if somebody really did kill somebody, out of surprise.

41:04
which I know how can you tell that they will not be able to use that in those states. In the end people, we are all people. No matter what side of the transgender coin or gay coin you stand on, at the end there is one thing that still unites us, which is being people. I love all people. Regardless of what you are or who you say you are or whatever the case is, I am a person that loves human beings.

41:31
no matter what my stance is on it. I would never treat a gay person or a transgender person or any other person any differently. If you transgender and you dying and you choking, I'ma do the Heimlich. If you need mouth to mouth, we gonna get mouth to mouth. You are an individual, you are a human being. That is the only thing that people should see. However, we have to also do our part to make sure.

42:01
that we are doing everything that we can to protect ourselves. And that means if you are out here dating and you know it's going somewhere, in my opinion, you need to tell that person early. So that person knows what they're getting into and it gives them the right to say yes or no. And I assure you, you walk off with

42:31
your life. And I'll say this one more time. If you run into a person that says they don't agree with being gay, they don't agree with being transgendered, whatever the stance is, whether they're religious about it or whether they just don't agree, do not automatically paint that person as a trans or gay phobic person. I think David Bogdanoff showed us exactly what a transphobic person is.

42:59
At one point he said, they're disgusting. I don't even want to be around them. You make me sick. These are words that came out of Bogdanoff's mouth. He even repeated these when he was on the stand as to what he said. Pure hatred. Nikki got killed out of pure hatred, something that Bogdanoff could not handle. And I do agree with one person said in court, they said they think what happened is maybe he.

43:28
don't know where he really is. Maybe he was really feeling something for Nikki, but being that his brother's as manly mans and he's known as that, he couldn't handle that. And what if that got back to his homies? I agree with that. I hope Nikki Kuhnhausen, rest in peace, because of what you identify as, does not mean you need to lose your life. We need to do more things to tighten down on these things. He got sentenced with a hate crime he should have

43:58
admitted to that, 19 and a half years is not long enough. And I hope that when it comes up time for him to get early parole, that people is there, which I could be there to say, you need to lock him back up. He needed to have a life sentence. So the least that you can do is make sure that he serves every day, minute, hour and seconds of his 19 and a half year sentence.

44:33
All right guys, I thank you for tuning in for this one. It is a supercharged one. It is a controversial one. There's a lot of feelings on both sides, but we just gotta keep remembering at the end of the day, we are all human beings.

44:50
All right, so coming at you next week, I'm gonna bring you author, Kendall Lehman. He's gonna tell you what it's like to live the gooder life. Yes, you heard me right. The gooder life. You want to tune in for that. That's actually the name of his book as well. Tune in. Kendall's gonna tell you all about it. And maybe by living this kind of life, we'll all feel a little bit better. And then...

45:18
I'm going to bring you an extraordinary person. Her name is Fitz Kohler. She wrote books all about coming back from cancer. We're going to talk to her, how she came back and how she is the success that she is today after pulling herself back from what could have been a death sentence.

45:40
Once again, guys, I thank you for tuning in. I know you have many, many options and true crime podcasts. I'm just happy that you chosen to be here with me. I hope you guys are all being safe out there. Protect yourselves, be good to yourself, to each other, and always remember, always stay humble. An act of kindness can make someone's day.

46:08
A little love and compassion can go a long way. And this is the podcast where two passions becomes one. I'll catch you guys on the next one.

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at True Crime and Authors and email at truecrimeandauthors at gmail.com. Cover art and logo designed by Dazzling underscore Ray from Fiverr. Sound mixing and editing by David McClam. Intro script by Sophie Wilde from Fiverr. And I'm the voice guy, your imaging guy from Fiverr. See you next time on True Crime and Authors.