The Wire

California Brings New Horror to Female Prisoners – Watch

June 27, 2023

A transgender woman who was convicted of triple murder has been sentenced to life in prison. The woman, who was born male but identifies as female, was sentenced to life in a women’s prison.

Dana Rivers, previously David Warfield, 68, was convicted in November of the triple murder of Charlotte Reed and Patricia Wright, a lesbian couple in their late 50s, and their 19-year-old son Benny Diambu-Wright, in Oakland, California, in 2016.

The women were both found stabbed and shot with a .38 revolver, and the body of their son was found in the street with gunshot wounds. Rivers walked out of the house, covered in blood and reeking of gasoline. Police searched the suspect and found bullets and brass knuckles.

Rivers was initially housed at Santa Rita Jail about 40 minutes north of San Jose.

On June 14, Rivers was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Two days later, Rivers was transferred to the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla.

Since 2021, the state has allowed at least 47 male inmates who identify as transgender or “non-binary” to transfer to women’s prisons, according to a January report from the Washington Free Beacon. Female inmates who said they were sexually assaulted by their trans-identifying male fellow prisoners have sued the California prison system.

Activist Kara Dansky has been protesting Rivers’ potential transfer to a women’s prison for months. She believes Rivers’ murders were a “hate crime” against the female victims, who were a married lesbian couple.

“There was something truly vile about the way this was carried out and his obvious hatred of her. My feeling from knowledge of the case is that he killed her because he couldn’t be her and he shouldn’t be in prison.”

Amie Ichikawa, an activist who herself served five years in the same prison as Rivers for a drug deal gone wrong, agreed that Rivers committed a hate crime and said female inmates are scared of trans-identifying men.

“They get very anxious when a [trans-identifying man] gets processed in,” Ichikawa said. “Even when they’re post-op, if they get mad they go right back to angry man mode.”