33. The Beatnik Killers | Leslie Perez & Carolyn Lima

In February 1961, Houston high society violently collided with the city’s underground margins. 

What started as a $30 encounter ended with a wealthy real estate tycoon shot six times, doused in high-octane gasoline, and set ablaze in a vacant lot.

​This week on Homocidal Tendency, Matt shifts gears from our recent heavy cases to dive into one of the most absurd, chaotic, and heavily sensationalized true crime stories in Texas history. 

Welcome to the saga of the "Beatnik Killers."

​We break down the chaotic shootout between Fred Tones, a 17-year-old runaway named Carolyn Lima, and a fiercely protective transgender sex worker named Leslie Douglas Ashley. 

We track their adrenaline-fueled getaway to the French Quarter for Mardi Gras, the massive FBI manhunt that tracked them to New York City, and the explosive 1960s media circus that followed.

​This is a stranger-than-fiction true crime case involving a military bayonet, a death row countdown, and the birth of a fiercely unapologetic LGBTQ+ political icon.

​Visuals & Archival Material:

Want to see the mugshots, the vintage newspaper clippings of the "Beatnik Killers," and the crime scene photos?

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Transcript

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Houston, Texas, February 6th, 1961. In a trash-drewn, vacant lot on the edge of the city, a fire is burning violently out of control. But this isn't a brush fire, and it isn't teenagers burning trash. The flames are feeding on high octane gasoline and the body of Fred Tones. Tones isn't a nobody. He's a wealthy, highly connected real estate tycoon, but tonight, his bullet-riddle body shot six times at close range, is lighting up the Texas sky. Speeding away from the Inferno and the dead man's stolen luxury Lincoln are two of the most unlikely killers the state of Texas has ever seen. Behind the wheel are a 17-year-old runaway named Carolyn Lima and Leslie Douglas Ashley, a transgender sex worker, surviving in the dangerous underground margins of the early 60s. They don't look like hardened mafia hitmen. But before this night is over, they'll set up a chain of events so bizarre, it defies reality. We're talking about a nationwide FBI manhunt, a getaway vendor at Monogras, a blood soaked bayonet defense, a literal 11th hour escape from the electric chair, and a daring escape. This isn't just a murder case. It's a chaotic, stranger than fiction descent into absolute madness. We're officially kicking off episode 33. And as you heard in the cold open, we're gonna do something a little bit different for this week's case. If you've been riding with us for the last few episodes, you know we've been sitting in some incredibly heavy, soul-crushing territory. We've covered stories of people who were destroyed simply for trying to exist. Barry Winchell just wanted to love his girlfriend. Kathy Thomas and Becky Dowski just wanted a safe space to be a couple. And Brian Eisenfeld. Brian just wanted to go home. Those cases taken a massive emotional toll, both on me in the studio and on you listening at home. So this week, we're gonna change the frequency. I mean, don't get me wrong, we're still dealing with a brutal, violent crime, but the vibe of this one hits completely different. This isn't a story of tragic innocence. This is a chaotic, high-speed collision of outcasts, millionaires, and bizarre twist of fate. So it's a little lighter on the emotional devastation and extremely heavy on the sheer outlandish wildness of human behavior. We're gonna have a little fun with the absolute absurdity of it all, because honestly, we need a breather. Before we head down to 1960s Houston, just a quick bit of housekeeping. If you want to see the crime scene photos, the old newspaper clippings, and the wild visuals that go along with this story, head over to the show notes and click the link tree. You'll find all of the socials for the show. That'll be your central hub for my feed. Also, if you don't mind, leave a rating and review. All the ratings and reviews really help the show push through the algorithm. And also, while you're at it, share the show with your friends. It'll do me a huge favor. Alright, so housekeeping over. Uh, let's get back to the fire. To understand how a man ends up dousting gasoline and set ablaze in a vacant lot, you have to understand the rigid, deeply conservative landscape of the 60s in Texas. This isn't just a story about a murder. It's a story about a violent collision between high society and the dangerous underground margins of the city. Before we get to the bayonet and the shootout, we need to set the stage. Up next, we're gonna bring in the three players at the center of this hurricane. One's a wealthy businessman looking for a thrill, the other two were runaways and outcasts just trying to survive the streets. Alright, well let's talk about the man who ended up burning in the vacant lot, Fred Toms. If you looked at Fred on paper in the early 1960s, you'd see the American dream. He was a successful Houston-based real estate broker. He had money, connections, and outwardly, he presented himself as a religious family man, highly respected, an upstanding member of society in a deeply conservative Bible Belt city. But as we see so often here on the show, the public faces rarely the whole story. Fred lived a completely double life. It was a classic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde situation. Behind the respectable real estate veneer, Tones had a much darker side. He had a prior arrest record, a detail the prosecution would later fight tooth and nail to hide from the jury. He was also deeply entrenched in Houston's underground sex trade. He wasn't just a random guy looking for a one-time thrill on the night of February 6th. According to testimony, he was at regular, paying Carolyn Lima for sex about once a week. Since December of 1960, he knew exactly who Carolyn and Leslie were. When he arranged that $30 encounter, he was fully tapped into their world. Now let's look at the second person in Carolyn and Lima. If Fred Tones was the picture of Houston High Society, Carolyn Lima was the exact opposite. In February 1961, she was just 17 years old. Described by the press of the era as an exceptionally pretty brunette, she was a runaway who had been swallowed whole by the gritty underground of the city. But Carolyn wasn't just a rebellious teenager seeking a thrill. Her young life was defined by severe early trauma. According to independent evidence brought up later, when she was just 12 years old, she survived an assault during a swimming trip outside Houston. That experience left deep psychological scars. It instilled in her a profound fear and distrust of men, and she identified early on as a confirmed lesbian. Unable to cope and push to the absolute margins of a deeply conservative society, Carolyn ended up surviving the only way she could on the streets. She turned to prostitution to make ends meet, servicing a vast array of clients in a very dangerous world. Everything shifted for Carolyn in the summer of 1960 when she walked into a dimly lit underground gay bar in Houston, one of the few real safe havens for the community. This is where she first crossed paths with Leslie. But Leslie wasn't just sitting in a corner booth hiding from the world. She was a fixture of the local scene. She frequently commanded the stage, performing in full drag under an absolutely unforgettable, larger-than-life moniker. She was known as the amazing dynamite Renee Cookie Lamont. It's a name that demands total attention, and when the traumatized 17-year-old runaway met the fierce, towering Cookie Lamont, she clicked immediately. They were two outcasts rejected by polite society, and they clung to each other. Leslie took the younger girl under her wing, moving her in and becoming her absolute fiercest protector on the dangerous streets of Houston. When they worked the streets, Leslie was sometimes introduced as Carolyn's brother, though they often worked as a package deal to help pay the bills. And that brings us to the third person in the room, the protector, the wildcar. Leslie Douglas Ashley. And just a side note, I've been using her dead name just for accuracy in the case, but from this point going forward, I'm just gonna refer to her as Leslie, and later on we'll talk about her transition name. Alright, so if you think Carolyn's life on the street was difficult, Leslie's existence in 1960s, Texas was a daily tightrope walk over a wood chipper. Assigned male at birth, Leslie identified and lived as a woman in a deeply conservative, heavily segregated, and rigidly religious landscape of Houston at the time. That didn't just make her an outcast. It made her a walking target. To the law, she was a criminal for just existing. To the public, she was a pariah. Pushed completely out of polite society. Leslie had to survive in the shadows, which is how she ended up working the exact same dangerous underground sex trade as Carolyn. When Leslie met the 17-year-old Carolyn at that Houston bar, something clicked, like we said. There were two lost souls rejected by the world, and they just clung together. But there's another layer to Leslie that would become the absolute crux of this entire case. Leslie suffered from severe, untreated mental illness. She had a history of psychological instability that was completely ignored by society that discarded her. It's a detail that the prosecution would later aggressively and illegally suppress in a ruthless bid to put her on the electric chair. So, let's look at the board on February 6th. You have Fred Tones, a wealthy man with a dark double life, and a penchant for the underground, and a history of aggression. You have Carolyn Lima, a deeply traumatized 17-year-old runaway, and you have Leslie, a marginalized, mentally fragile, but fiercely protective survivor who would do absolutely anything to keep Carolyn safe. Tones paid $30 for a threesome, but when that door opened to his real estate office, yeah, really classy, they did it as real estate office. A transaction ended, and a nightmare began. It's the night of February 6, 1961. Fred Tones, Carolyn Lima, and Leslie are alone in the room. Tones has paid his $30 and expects to get what he paid for. But almost immediately, the energy in the room turns dark. Tones doesn't want just a standard transaction. He becomes aggressively rough. He attempts to force Carolyn into sodomy. Giving her severe trauma, Carolyn fights back. Tones loses his temper. According to testimony that would later echo throughout the Texas courts, Tones became violently enraged and began physically tearing at Carolyn's private parts. She was screaming. She was trapped. So that's when Leslie steps in. Remember, Leslie is fiercely protective of Carolyn. She physically intervenes to pull the 200-pound man off of Carolyn. A brutal struggle breaks out. But Tones isn't going to let the two women tell him no. He reaches for his weapon. In that dim lit room, a massive military bayonet flashes. Tones lunges. He is swinging a literal weapon of war in a confined space. It's pure chaos. Life or death. Leslie desperately scrambles for Carolyn's first. She reaches inside and pulls out a 22-caliber pistol. She aims at the raging tones and pulls the trigger. The bullet hits him, but it doesn't drop him. He keeps coming, the bayonet still in his hand. Terrified that they're about to be butchered, Carolyn snatches the gun from Leslie. She points the barrel directly at Tones and squeezes the trigger. Again, and again, and again. Six bullets in total. Five of them fired by the 17-year-old. Fred Tones hits the floor. The ringing in their ears fades, replaced by the absolute paralyzing horror of what just happened. In 1961, Texas, a transgender sex worker and a teenage runaway have just gunned down a wealthy, well-connected white businessman. Self-defense or not, they know exactly what the Houston police will do to them. So panic takes over. And they they have to get rid of the body. Adrenaline flooding their veins. They manage to drag Tone's lifeless body out of the room. They hoist him into the trunk of his own luxury car. They get behind the wheel and tear off into the Houston night, driving aimlessly until they find an overgrown trash-filled bacon lot. They dump the real estate tycoon and the weeds. But they know the body is too easy to identify. They find gasoline, they douse his clothes, his face, his body, and then someone strikes a match. They don't stay to watch him burn. They jump back into the stolen car, hit the gas, and flee into the dark. They have no money, a stolen car, and the blood of a millionaire on their hands. And as the flames rise into the Texas night, they make a decision. It'll turn a local homicide into a massive nationwide spectacle. When you just shot a prominent millionaire and set his body on fire in a vacant lot, conventional wisdom says lay low. You hide in the basement. You disappear into the woods. But Carolyn and Leslie weren't conventional. They're sitting in a stolen, blood-splattered car, fueled by pure adrenaline and absolute panic. They hit the gas and head south towards the coast, making their first stop in Galveston, but they know they can't stay in Texas. The moment the cops identify the chart remains, the borders of the state are gonna lock down. So they keep driving east, and they don't just run into a quiet town in the middle of nowhere. They drive straight into the chaotic, neon-lit heart of New Orleans. It's February 1961, which means they roll right into New Orleans right in the middle of Mardi Gras. In ways, it's the perfect cover. The city is flooded with tourists, drunks, and masked revelers. For a transgender woman and a 17-year-old runaway, it's one of the few places in America where they can seamlessly blend into the madness of the crowd. They spend days hiding in plain sight, using Tone's cash as a vibe, swallowed up by the noise and the partying. But while they are losing themselves in the French quarter, the situation back in Houston is going nuclear. The Houston police find the body. It doesn't take long to identify Fred Tones, and it takes even less time to trace his last no movements directly back to Carolyn and Leslie. Warrants are issued, the FBI is called in, and the Texas media gets a hold of the story. When the press realizes who the Swespecs are, a teenage prostitute and a transgender sex worker, they don't just report the news, they sensationalize it to a terrifying degree. The Houston press slaps a nickname on that goes nationwide. The Beatnik Killers. In 1961, the word beatnik was a loaded term. To the conservative establishment, a beatnik wasn't just someone who liked jazz and poetry. It was a catch-all word for degenerates, for people who rejected God, society, and morality. The press paints Carolyn and Leslie not as desperate survivors of a violent attack, but as cold-blooded counterculture thrill killers who lured an innocent family man to his fiery death. Their faces are splashed across the front pages. They're public enemy number one. The heat is on, and New Orleans is no longer safe. So the beaten killers abandon the Gulf Coast. They head north. They're aiming for the biggest, most anonymous concrete jungle in the world, New York City. They make it to Manhattan, hoping the sheer size of the city will swallow them whole. For three weeks, they actually manage to stay off the radar. Three weeks of constantly looking over their shoulders, jumping at every siren, knowing that if they're caught, the state of Texas will put them in the electric chair. And you can't outrun the FBI forever. Manhattan in the winter is a cold, unforgiving place. If you have money, it's the greatest city in the world. But for Carolyn and Leslie, the cash they pulled from Fred Tone's wallet is rapidly running out. For three weeks, they managed to do the impossible. Two young marginalized sex workers, with their faces plastered across the front pages of newspapers nationwide, successfully baited the largest law enforcement on the planet. They're living out of cheap, cramped rooms, jumping at every footstep in the hallway, sleeping with one eye open, if you will, to be cliche. But you can only run an adrenaline for so long before the paranoia eats you alive. And you can't outrun the federal government most of the time. The FBI isn't just sitting on their hands. They've been methodically tracking the beatna killers from the burning lot in Houston through the Chaotic Streets of New Orleans and straight up the East Coast. By early March, the net completely closed. The FBI has got their location in New York, and when you're on the radar for gunning down a wealthy real estate broker and setting him on fire, they don't just send a couple B cops and knock down the door. The door flies open. Federal agents swarm the tiny room. There's no Hollywood shootout. There's no desperate last stand. Just the crushing, terrifying reality of handcuffs clicking shut. The three-week manhut is officially opened. Carolyn and Leslie are dragged out into the freezing New York air, shoved in the back of federal vehicles, and eventually booked. But the nightmare is just beginning, because the FBI isn't keeping them in New York. They're being extradited straight back to Texas. They're being sent back to a deeply conservative city that has already convicted them in the court of the public opinion. The Houston media has whipped the public into an absolute frenzy. So the press is waiting, the prosecutors are waiting, and the Texas justice system has absolutely no sympathy for a teenage prostitute and a transgender sex worker. It's out for blood. The trial of the beating killers is a full-blown media circus. The gallery is packed, the local newspapers are running front-page headlines every single day, and the prosecution is treating it like a slam-dunk crusade to clean up the streets of Texas. For the very first swing of the gabble, the deck is entirely stacked against him. The defense presents the reality of that night. Fred Tones was a regular client who turned violently aggressive. He sexually assaulted the 17-year-old Carolyn. He pulled on a massive military bayonet, and Leslie and Clarin fired the gun in sheer desperate self-effense. But the prosecution, backed by a deeply conservative judge, refused to let the narrative see the day of light. They paint a completely different picture. In their version, Fred is a wealthy, innocent, god-fearing family man that argue that Carolyn Leslie ruthlessly lured with the sole intention of robbing him, murdering him, and stealing his car. And the court, they let the prosecution play dirty. Really dirty. Like we said before, they successfully blocked the defense from showing Fred's prior arrest record. They suppress all evidence of his double life and his heavy involvement in the underground sex trade. Even worse, they actually hide Leslie's documented history of mental illness, which would have immediately disqualified her from facing the death penalty. The jury is presented with a sanitized saint and two degenerate monsters. For a Texas jury in their early 60s, looking at a transgender sex worker and a teenage runaway, it's not even a contest. They don't buy the bayonet story, they don't buy the self-defense. The verdict comes down. Guilty of murder with malice afterthought. But the state of Texas doesn't just want them in a cell, they want to make an example of the beanie killers. The judge hands down the ultimate sentence. Death by literature. Leslie and Carolyn, just 18 years old at the time of sentencing, are slated to become the first women executed in the state of Texas in nearly a century. They're locked in their cells, their appeals are rapidly burning out, and the clock is ticking down to the day they're scheduled to walk to Old Sparky. They're out of money, out of legal options, and completely out of time. But just when it seems like the switch is about to be thrown, the The story takes the most bizarre turn yet. It's March of 1963. They're quite literally hours away from death when Leslie's desperate stepfather makes the Hail Mary play. He reaches out to a man named William Branham. If you don't know who William Branham was, you have to understand the sheer scale of his influence in 1950s and 60s. Branham wasn't just a local preacher. He was internationally famous post-World War II. He was a healing evangelist. Is that how you say that? Evangeliist? He's one of those like heal you preachers, anyways. He draws crowds of tens of thousands of people. And for whatever reason, Branham takes up the cause of the beaten and killers. It's reported it's because of Leslie's father, or stepfather, we should say. So Branham travels to Houston, and as the clock is ticking down to the exact hour that Carolyn and Leslie are scheduled to die, Branham orchestrates a massive citywide prayer vigil. Thousands of people gather. The same city that was demanding their blood just months prior is now the epicent of a massive divine plea for clemency. The execution is just four hours away. Guards are literally making the final preparations, and then the phone rings. But it's not the governor of Texas on the line, and technically technically it's not God either, because why would it be? It's Judge John R. Brown of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Brown issues a last-minute emergency state of execution. While Brown works the crowd, a new defense team was working the courts. They finally managed to drag the prosecution's dirty secrets into the light. They exposed the fact that the state of Texas had completely and illegally suppressed the extensive medical record showing Leslie's severe history of mental illness. The appeals court realizes the trial was a sham, and the executions are halted. Leslie is officially declared legally insane and unfit for the death penalty. Carolyn's sentence is eventually knocked all the way down from the electric chair to just five years in prison. They're spared. But they aren't free. The state ships Leslie out of the prison system and transports her to a highly secured psychiatric facility in San Antonio. The expectation is that Leslie will quietly disappear in the sterile padded halls of the asylum and be forgotten by history. But if you think Leslie is just going to sit quietly in a psych ward, you haven't been paying attention. San Antonio State Hospital in the 60s was exactly what you picture when you think of a mid-century psychiatric asylum. It was imposing, overcrowded, and heavily secured. When the state of Texas dropped Leslie off at the front gates, the authorities wiped their hands clean. As far as the justice system was concerned, the eating killer was neutralized. She was locked in a ward, heavily medicated, and out of sight. But they severely underestimated Leslie's absolute refusal to be caged. Leslie didn't just sit in the rec room staring at the walls. She bides her time. She watches the routine. She figures out the blind spots. And then she executes one of the most audacious breakouts in Texas history. She completely slips the net, vanishing from a high-security state hospital and disappearing into the sweltering Texas heat. When the guards realize her bed is empty, the system goes into total meltdown. The state of Texas just lost a convicted murderer who, just once prior, was in national front page news and hours away from the electric chair. The governor's furious. The FBI is immediately called back in. Leslie is officially placed on the FBI's ten most wanted list. Every local cop, every state trooper, every federal agent in the South, they're looking for her. Her face is broadcast on television sets across the country. So how do you hide when you're the most recognizable fugitive in America? You don't hide in a basement, you hide in plain sight. And you paint over your face. Leslie realizes the only place on earth where outcasts, drifters, and people with no past are welcome without question is a traveling carnival. It's a completely cash-based, transient world that moves from town to town under the cover of darkness. So she links up with a traveling circus. But she just can't work the ticket booth. Her famous space is too obvious. So she takes a job that requires her to be completely unrecognizable. Leslie, the notorious beat nick killer, the excitemental patient, the transgender sex worker who survived a shootout, slaps on layers of thick grease paint, puts on a wig, and transforms into Bobo the fucking clown. That's right. She became a clown. It is without a doubt one of the most surreal images in true crime history. For six solid months, while the FBI is turning the country upside down looking for a hardened killer, Leslie is out there throwing pies. She's making balloon animals for children. She's performing slapstick comedy for the exact crowds of conservative godfaring citizens who a year earlier were cheering for her to burn in the electric chair. She's hiding right in front of them, shielded by nothing but white face paint and a fake red nose. It's fucking brilliant. It was wildly successful. And for half a year, Bobo the Clown outsmarted the entire federal government. The problem with hiding in plain sight is that eventually someone looks a little too closely. By the spring of 1964, the FBI is plastering Leslie's face on every post office wall and every true crime magazine in the country. And carnival workers have a lot of downtime between towns. The story goes that someone working alongside Leslie picks up a copy of a detective magazine. They're looking at the mugshot of at the one of the FBI's most wanted, a beat killer. Then they look across the lot at a clown. The grease pay can hide a lot, but it can't change the bone structure. It can't change the height. And so then a tip is called in. The carnival has set up shop in Atlanta, Georgia. And the FBI doesn't want to take any chances. They descend on the fairgrounds in force. Picture this deeply surreal, almost cinematic moment. Federal agents in crisp dark suits push their way past the Ferris wheel, past the cotton candy stands, and swarming a circus tent to put handcuffs on a person in full-blown clown makeup. The six-month run of Bubba the Clown is officially over. For the second time in three years, Leslie is hauled back to Houston in chains. But this time the playing field is a little different. The state of Texas knows they can't get away with the exact same dirty tricks they pulled in 61. The suppressed medical records are out in the open. The fact that Fred Tones was a violent bayonet-wielding aggressor with a deeply hidden background is no longer a secret they can hide from the jury. Leslie faces a completely new trial. The prosecution still pushes for a brutal conviction, but the defense is finally able to paint a somewhat accurate picture of the absolute terror in the real estate office that night. When the verdict comes down, she's still found guilty, but the alleged terror is off the table. Instead of death, Leslie is handed a 15-year sentence, and Carolyn Lima, who had been serving her reduced five-year sentence, finishes her time and quietly fades away into the anonymity of normal life, trying to leave the trauma of the beaten killer days behind her. Leslie goes to the Texas State Penitentiary, but she doesn't serve 15 years, because with time served and good behavior, she only does five. By the late 60s, Leslie, who survived the streets, survived a bloody shootout, survived death row, broke out of a psychiatric asylum, and outran the FBI, walks out of those prison gates. In the years 1971, for her entire life, society has tried to force her into a box. They tried to criminalize her existence, they tried to medicate her, and they literally tried to execute her. But walking out of that prison, Leslie makes a decision that changes the trajectory of the rest of her life. She isn't gonna hide anymore. She's done surviving in the shadows. She undergoes gender confirming surgery. Now, let's put that into perspective. Transitioning today is still a battle, but undergoing gender confirming surgery in the early 70s, especially as an ex-convict in the American South, was almost unheard of. It's incredibly dangerous, both medically and socially, but for Leslie, it wasn't a choice. It was the final step in claiming her life that she was always meant to live. With her physical transition complete, she sheds the name Leslie Douglas Ashley for forever. She needs a new name for a new life. She legally becomes Leslie Elaine Perez. Now, you're gonna ask, where did the name Perez come from? Leslie wasn't Hispanic, but I've seen accounts that say that her grandmother was Mexican, so I mean we'll take it with a grain of salt. But she did take the surname from a former lover, a Latin man, who she'd been involved with. And in classic Leslie fashion, this immediately caused a bizarre, highly localized controversy. Houston had a very tight-knit, deeply proud Hispanic political community. This notorious white, former Death Row inmate, who used to be known as a beat in a killer, adopts a Latino surname and starts walking around town as Leslie Perez. A lot of people were furious. They felt she was appropriating the name and bringing her massive criminal baggage into their community. But Leslie just did not care. She did not care one bit at all. But there's one thing you should understand about Leslie by now, it's that, like I said, she didn't give a damn about making polite society completely uncomfortable. So now she has her true body, she has her new name, and she's completely unafraid of confrontation. Leslie should have taken her freedom and lived a quiet life, but instead, she looks at the deeply conservative, homophobic, and transformic political establishment in Houston, the exact establishment that tried to strap her to an electric chair and decides she's gonna fight back. If the conservative establishment in Houston thought that prison was gonna break Leslie, they were dead wrong. It only weaponized her. Throughout the 70s and 80s, Leslie doesn't just join the queer rights movement, she kicks the door off the hinges. She becomes a fixture in Houston politics, eventually becoming the secretary of the gay and lesbian political caucus. And she brings absolute unapologetic chaos to the role. Leslie was famously abrasive. She cursed out politicians, she shouted down opponents. She didn't ask for a seat at the table, she demanded it. And if they said no, she flipped the table over. But where her activism reaches a fever pitch is during the height of the AIDS epidemic. As the virus begins tearing through the community and the government completely ignores the dying, Leslie steps up. She becomes a leading force in Houston's chapter of Act Up, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power. And she doesn't do it alone. She brings her mother. Think about this visual for a second. You have Leslie, a towering transgender ex-convict who survived death row and her elderly mother, literally chaining themselves to the doors of health clinics and government buildings, screaming through megaphones, refusing to move until the city provides funding and medication for AIDS patients. They were arrested constantly, but they didn't care. Leslie had already faced the electricity. She wasn't scared of a pair of handcuffs. She becomes local folklore, a hero to the marginalized, and an absolute nightmare to the political elite, which makes her next move the ultimate mic drop. In 1990, Leslie decides that screaming from the outside isn't enough anymore. She decides to run for public office. She puts her name on the ballot for chair of the Harris County Democratic Party. The political establishment goes into meltdown. Opponents digging up the 1961 case, the headlines return. Former beaten and killer runs for party chair. They try to use her past, her transition, and her prison time to destroy her. But Leslie leans right into it. She basically tells the press, yes, I'm a convicted killer. Yes, I'm transgender, and I'm exactly the kind of fighter this party needs. She campaigns relentlessly, and to the absolute horror of the conservative political machine, it works. Leslie Perez captures thousands of votes. She performs so well that she forces the incumbent, a well-connected, established politician, into a runoff election. Let that sink in. A transgender woman who was hours away from being executed for a fiery, bayonet-filled murder nearly took over the Democratic Party in the largest county in Texas. She ultimately loses the runoff. And she runs later and unfortunately loses. But winning the seat was never really the point. The point was that she had made them look at her, and she forced the city of Houston to acknowledge that the people that they throw away, the people they lock up and try to execute, they have power. Leslie Elaine Perez passed away in 2005. When you look back at her legacy, it's almost impossible to reconcile all the different lives she lived into one cohesive story. How do you measure a life of such absolute extremes? You can't erase the fact that Fred Tones died in a brutal, violent death and his body was set on fire in a vacant lot. But you also can't erase the fact that Leslie Perez spent the last three decades of her life fighting relentlessly for the marginalized, chaining herself to the buildings, and demanding the sick and the dying be treated with absolute humanity during the AIDS pandemic. She wasn't a saint. She was a survivor. She was a teenage sex worker's fierce protector. She was a death row inmate. She was a fugitive in clown makeup. And she was a trail-blazing political powerhouse who forced the city that wanted her dead to look squarely in the eyes and acknowledge her power. It's a story that can only happen in America, and it's a reminder that sometimes the people who change the world aren't the ones who are playing by the rules. Sometimes they're the ones who refuse to be caged. That's gonna do it for the dive into the Bean Killers. If you want to see the wild archival footage, the newspaper clippings of the manhunt, and the photos of Leslie's run for office, hit the link training in the show notes. It'll give you all of our socials. It's your central hub for everything, homocidal Tennessee. If you like this episode, share it with a friend. It's the best way to grow. And if you don't mind, give me a review and a five-star rating. I'm Matt. Thanks for writing Shotgun through this madness. Keep your doors locked, watch your back, and I'll see you next time.