A Pennsylvania man was convicted of stabbing a transgender dressmaker from Philadelphia greater than 40 occasions, chopping off her legs and tossing her physique into the Schuylkill River 5 years in the past, prosecutors mentioned this week.
Akhenaton Jones, 41, faces a compulsory life sentence for the horrific homicide and mutilation of Dominique “Rem’mie” Fells, 27, a contract wig and clothes maker with whom he had previously been romantically concerned, Philly District Lawyer Larry Krasner introduced Monday.
“It’s some of the savage and private and hateful crimes I’ve ever seen,” Assistant DA Ashley Toczylowski mentioned of the June 2020 killing at a press convention.
Fells’ badly overwhelmed torso was pulled from the river close to Bartram’s Backyard throughout an unrelated seek for two lacking teenagers on June 8, 2020, authorities mentioned. Her legs, which had been stuffed right into a rubbish bag, have been recovered from the waterway days later.
Investigators looking Jones’ home discovered it splattered with blood — together with a knife, an electrical noticed, and white hazmat swimsuit drenched in blood, prosecutors mentioned.
Surveillance footage later confirmed him taking a trash bag out of the home and loading it right into a white van.
He was then seen driving the van to the river in surveillance footage, authorities mentioned.
Jones and Fells had been mates for greater than three years and have been intimate up to now, Walter Chisholm, Jones’ court-appointed lawyer, informed the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Jones insists one other man murdered her then compelled him to assist eliminate her physique, in response to Chisholm.
He was discovered responsible final week of first-degree homicide, possession of an instrument of crime and abuse of corpse.
His earlier trial in December was declared a mistrial as a result of the jury couldn’t agree if he was responsible of first-degree homicide and possessing an instrument of crime.
He’s scheduled to be sentenced in September.
Fells was creative and loved “having enjoyable and being vibrant,” pal Madelyn Morrison mentioned shortly after her loss of life.
“She all the time confirmed us these items of hers that have been so sensible, so artistic,” Morrison informed the Inquirer in June.
There have been greater than 370 instances of deadly violence towards transgender and gender non-conforming individuals in america since 2014, in response to the Human Rights Marketing campaign.
