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Larry was dead; Brandon had shot him. The murder trial, in which not a single material fact was ever in dispute, took three years of pretrial preparation, and a full two months of testimony from 98 witnesses, almost all of which was aimed solely at determining motive. From the book's inside flap: “In February 2008, during first period English class at a junior high school in Oxnard, California, blue-eyed and blond fourteen-year-old Brandon McInerney shot and killed fifteen-year-old Larry King, a brown boy, who had recently begun to identify as Leticia.”
Brandon confessed to police at the scene; in fact, he had killed Larry right in front of his homeroom teacher and 26 classmates. The only question was why. Who, what, where, and when were known, but motive consumed the trial and, accordingly, the book.
Ken Corbett, psychologist, psychoanalyst, author, and academic, is an expert on boyhood and gender, including modern-day takes on masculinity, male and female stereotypes, gender identity, and social norms. He also works clinically with transgender youth. He was intrigued by this
Note to the Reader: I have used “Larry” and “he” in this article, rather than “Leticia” and “she,” because “Larry” was the language of the courtroom, the court record, and the book. I did so even though, as author Ken Corbett noted, doing so means that history will remember the story this way, with Leticia not fully “named” and her transgender identity not fully recognized, which is in itself a kind of repetitive denial of “Leticia” herself. Corbett did attempt in places to use “Leticia,” mostly when writing from her perspective, in an effort to recognize her account of herself, and I have followed the author's lead where practical.
case, and travelled to California to attend the court proceedings, where he also interviewed as many key players as he could, from witnesses to friends, family, teachers, lawyers, and community members.
Corbett brings his trained clinical eye to the narrative, all t