Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 14, 1995 TAG: 9503140114
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: HANOVER LENGTH: Medium
Jonathan Jukes, now 17, says he shot his father and stepmother a year and a half ago to spare them from learning that he was a transvestite.
The teen-ager says he also had another twisted goal: to extract the fluid from his stepmother's breasts after he killed her and inject it into his own. He thought that would turn him into a girl.
Jukes' father survived the shooting, but his stepmother died. Jukes, who also beat his 8-year-old half-brother with a gun, was convicted last April of first-degree murder, attempted murder and two counts of using a firearm in a felony. Judge Richard H.C. Taylor rejected an insanity defense.
``I prayed to God and I prayed to the devil to turn me into a girl,'' Jukes told the Richmond Times-Dispatch in an interview last week from the Hanover County jail. ``That didn't work.''
Jukes was admitted to Central State Hospital last fall after his attorney successfully argued that his sentencing should be postponed until he was treated for his mental disorders. He was diagnosed with ``transvestic fetishism'' and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Jukes' attorney, J. Overton Harris, estimated Jukes would be held at Central State for five to 20 years, with the time served applying toward his prison sentence.
But the hospital discharged him after three months, saying he no longer met the state criteria for admission because he was not acutely suicidal.
At a hearing Wednesday, Taylor is to set the date for a sentencing hearing, probably in 30 to 60 days, at which he'll decide whether to send Jukes to prison or back to Central State.
Harris said the law is unclear whether Taylor can order Central State to take Jukes after doctors have said he doesn't meet the criteria.
The teen-ager's psychologist says Jukes doesn't belong in prison and has been threatened twice with sexual violence by jail inmates. Jukes has been held in a solitary cell - at his request - since he was released from the hospital last month.
``The danger for a boy like this is that he'll become used and abused in prison because of his vulnerability,'' said Dr. David Israel. ``If that happens, then I think we will have a boy who comes out much worse than he went in.''
Jukes' mother, who gave up custody of her son when he was about 4, wants him to return to the mental hospital. So does his father, who still has a bullet from the shooting lodged in his neck.
``He's getting better - he's been through the worst of the trauma,'' Israel said. ``It's a healthy spirit that's partly youth-related, and partly that he's been offered some good treatment at Central State.''
by CNB