A Murder Over a Girl

Starred review from November 9, 2015
Psychologist Corbett (Boyhoods) recounts, with riveting clarity and deep humanity, the 2011 trial of Brandon McInerney for fatally shooting his 15-year-old classmate Larry King during their middle-school English class in Oxnard, Calif., in 2008. But as he brings careful precision and a trained clinical eye to the desperate, painful facts of the shooter and victim—Brandon, white, from a broken and violent home, was 14 at the time of the shooting and beginning to exhibit white supremacist loyalties; Larry, mixed-race, removed from his adoptive home on charges of abuse, had just begun to identify as transgender—Corbett also excavates the chilling and dangerous beliefs that led the defense to construct a persuasive story of a “normal” boy pushed over the edge of self-control by a flamboyant “queer.” He draws out the suspense of the courtroom drama by intertwining his professional knowledge of adolescents, gender, and trauma with empathetic portraits of the people involved, and he recounts his personal struggle to understand the case as it unfolds. Corbett depicts these events as a story in which emotion outweighs logic and ethics, in which exhibiting gender variance is a worse crime than hatred, and in which the human mind makes sense of something confounding through denial and erasure. Profound and disturbing, this heartbreaking testimony of our culture’s worst fissures suggests that understanding is the only way to heal.

March 1, 2016
A teenager's murder raises issues of bullying and homophobia.In 2008, 14-year-old Brandon McInerney shot and killed his classmate Larry King in their junior high school English class. Psychologist Corbett (Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy/New York Univ.; Boyhoods: Rethinking Masculinities, 2009), unsettled by the crime, decided to mount his own investigation into its causes and consequences. "What was on Brandon's mind?" he asked. "What were the feelings that compelled him, or the fantasies that drove him, to shoot Larry? What had been the state of his life? How had it come to this?" (The author refers to the victim as Larry while covering the trial and as Leticia when "writing from her perspective.") Corbett recounts the trial so exhaustively that the narrative often reads like a court transcript. He reports interviews with McInerney's and King's parents, friends, and some of the 98 witnesses for the defense and prosecution. He also effectively reveals how deeply the trial affected him. The story of a murder, he reflects, "is not simply a recitation of facts or a pragmatic account of the living and the dead." This murder was tangled in accusations of bullying, white supremacy, and hate. Brandon's lawyers portrayed their client as an abused child (both parents were drug addicts) who had been taunted by Larry, an effeminate boy who was undergoing a gender transition. The prosecution argued that Brandon was a gang member "enflamed by white supremacist ideology" and "a self-declared vigilante homophobe" who "hunted and executed a gender-variant kid." After a 36-day trial, the jury considered three possible verdicts: first-degree murder, second-degree murder, or voluntary manslaughter. But they could not agree, ending in a hung jury, with several jurors protesting vigorously because Brandon had been tried as an adult. Corbett deems the crime murder, and he was troubled when a juror who concurred told him that the hate crime charge of homophobia had been barely discussed. In the end, Brandon pled guilty to second-degree murder and voluntary manslaughter, sentenced to 21 years in prison.An emotionally resonant account of a real-life tragedy.

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February 15, 2016

Corbett (psychology, New York Univ. Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy; Boyhoods) bears witness to the trial of Brandon McInerney for the 2008 murder of classmate Larry/Leticia King. Exploring the psychological and social fault-lines of racism and fear of nonnormative gender and sexual expression, Corbett seeks to understand why McInerney shot King and how the case unfolded in the community, national media, and at trial. Corbett pieces his narrative together through news coverage, observation during trial, and interviews he conducted with family members, witnesses, school staff, law enforcement, and community members. He describes how McInerney's violent actions were normalized, even justified, while King's explorations of a nascent transgender and/or queer self were repeatedly framed as socially disruptive and sexually aggressive. At times, the close reading of the case feels undercontextualized; more could have been done to place King's murder within the ongoing pattern of violence against queer and trans youth of color. VERDICT Corbett powerfully documents the life-threatening consequences of America's persistent fear of gender difference. This will be read by those with academic, political, and personal interest in making the world safer for LGBT youth.--Anna J. Clutterbuck-Cook, Massachusetts Historical Soc. Lib., Boston

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Starred review from March 1, 2016
The story made national news. In February 2008, 14-year-old Brandon McInerney shot and killed his 15-year-old classmate, Larry King, during first period English class in Oxnard, California. It was a shocking crime. King had recently begun referring to himself as Leticia and wearing high heels, jewelry, and makeup to class. Psychologist Corbett read about it in New York City, where he maintains a private practice, and wanted to learn more. So he traveled to California to attend the trial and conduct interviews, determined to discover the reasons behind this provocative slaying of a boy who had begun to identify as a girl. Why did Brandon, who was white, kill mixed-race Larry in his homeroom class and in front of his teacher and his peers? That is the question that Corbett attempts to answer in this searing and complicated inquiry into gender identity, class, and race in America, as played out in a small city on the edge of Los Angeles. An especially relevant and timely topic, given the ongoing discussion of gender and sexuality in the media.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)