Another month has passed without full release of Audrey Hale’s manifesto, which could reveal her motive for the murder of nine-year-olds Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney and Hallie Scruggs, daughter of Chad Scruggs, senior pastor at the Covenant Presbyterian Church in Nashville.
Hale, a woman who thought she was a man, also shot dead schoolmaster Katherine Koonce, 59; substitute teacher Cynthia Peak, 61; and custodian Mike Hill, 61. On March 29, 2023, two days after the murders, the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit took custody of the manifesto. While release awaits, a movie offers insight into motive, the primary question in any murder case.
In the 1980 Dressed to Kill, directed by Brian De Palma, “a mysterious blonde woman kills one of a psychiatrist’s patients, and then goes after the high-class call girl who witnessed the murder.” The murder victim is Kate Miller (Angie Dickinson), whose tech-savvy son Peter (Keith Gordon), sets up hidden cameras outside the office of the psychiatrist, Dr. Robert Elliot, wonderfully played by Michael Caine.
Dressing up as a woman he calls “Bobbie,” he slashes Kate to death with a straight razor. High-end hooker Liz Blake (Nancy Allen) propositions the doctor and, as with Kate, that stimulation makes “Bobby” want to kill again. When it’s all over, Liz tells Peter what the deal is.
“Dr. Elliot was one of those men who “think they were born in the wrong body. They are called transsexuals and all they want to do is have their sex changed.”
“How do you do that?” wonders Peter. While turning tricks, Liz has been doing her research.
“If you are a man who wants to become a woman, you take female hormones.”
“What do they do?”
“Your skins softens, you grow breasts, and you don’t get hard anymore.” Momentarily stunned, Peter replies, “great.” Nancy wonders if he really wants to know about this.
“Yes,” Peter says. “It’s giving me some wonderful ideas for a science project. Instead of building a computer, I could build a woman, out of me.” So Liz gives him the details
“The next step is surgery. They take your penis, and slice it down the middle,” a procedure known as a “penectomy.”
“That’s what I thought it was,” Peter says. Liz carries on the tutorial.
“Then castration, plastic reconstruction and the formation of an artificial vagina, a vaginoplasty to those in the know.” Peter has heard enough.
“I think I’m going to stick to my computer,” he says, and for Liz, “that sounds like a very good idea.” That invites a look at what these sort of procedures entail, as explained by experts in the field.
Men taking female hormones find that muscle mass decreases and testicles shrink to less than half their original size. These and other effects are reversible if the man stops taking the hormones. On the other hand, some breast growth, and possibly reduced or lost fertility, are “not reversible.”
In a penectomy, “the entire penis, including the root that goes into the pelvis, is removed.”
A vaginectomy “involves complete removal of all the tissue of the vagina.” Then there’s phalloplasty, vulvectomy, scrotoplasty, and such, with the possibility of a fistula, a rare connection between body parts such as the vagina and rectum.
“If you see fecal matter (poop) coming from the vagina,” the Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) explains, “you may have a fistula and should tell us right away.”
It’s not clear which of these procedures biological male Richard Levine has endured but Admiral “Rachel” Levine, Joe Biden’s Assistant Secretary for Health, now proclaims that “gender-affirming care is medically necessary, safe, and effective for trans and non-binary youth.” In current costume, the Admiral bears a striking resemblance to the razor-wielding Bobbie. More than a graphic hommage to Alfred Hitchcock, Dressed to Kill is a study in motivation and relevant for current times.
LGBTQ is a not a community but a construct, a departure from reality that can motivate deadly violence. The ultimate impossibility of becoming a man doubtless motivated Audrey Hal, whose murder spree took place in the run-up to “Trans Day of Vengeance.” Liz Blake didn’t get into detail about scrotoplasty and such, but for 1980 the call girl was a pretty competent counselor. So in the style of Peter, young men on the rise would best stick with their computers. While thinking this over, don’t forget Angie Dickinson.
She got her start in a 1954 episode of “Death Valley Days” and in 1974 fans saw a lot of her in Big Bad Momma, with William Shatner. At the time of Dressed to Kill, Dickinson was 48 and for the famous shower scene De Palma used body double Victoria Johnson, who shines in the part. At this writing, Angie Dickinson carries on at 92. She outlived one-time husband Burt Bacharach, the great songwriter who died in February at the age of 94.