We have been honoring our dead since before “we were us” if some discoveries of Neanderthal burial sites hold up to scrutiny. Tombs, cemeteries and other monuments for the departed are features of the earliest civilizations. Over the last 150 years, this has grown to include battlefield memorials (the Civil War features prominently in the USA) or sites of horrendous human outrage such as the memorial at Treblinka honoring those victims of the Holocaust. We also memorialize murder sites of historical importance, think the Lorraine Motel in Memphis or the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas; others seemingly vanish over time. For example, the site of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre is now a parking lot used for a nursing home.
More humble manifestations of this ancient urge are the Roadside Memorials. I’ve often wondered “why this”? Presumably the person(s) memorialized at such a place are buried or honored elsewhere. Why memorialize an event that was most likely violent and sudden?
I found my answer when my job routinely took me through southeastern Nebraska where in December 1993, a triple homicide occurred. It might have gone unnoticed outside the immediate area if not for one of the victims, Brandon Teena.
This isn’t a diary about the murders, the nationwide media firestorm, the banality of life in the rural Midwest, the often overlooked presence of an African American man (one of the victims) or the origins of transgender awareness and push for acceptance in the face of tragedy. It’s about finding a place, an innocuous place but an important one. It’s a place that many people have visited but no one maddeningly documented its location.
BACKGROUND
Three people were murdered in the wee hours of 31 December 1993: Lisa Lambert, Phillip DeVine and Brandon Teena. If you need a refresher, you can search the internet for coverage of the murders as the story went national. If you’re like me, you started with the 1999 movie, Boys Don’t Cry, and worked backwards. It’s a start but if there’s anything I’ve learned living in this region for 20 years is that Hollywood never accurately portrays rural white America. Quite frankly, because Hollywood is supposed to be beautiful, they have an impossible task of making people look ordinary. If you want to see the only dead on portrayal, watch Winter’s Bone.
A documentary was made in 1998, The Brandon Teena Story. It’s not a great film in terms of style and direction but you do get a far better picture of the people involved and the issues surrounding a transgender person in rural America in 1993.
In 1997, the New Yorker ran a long form piece, The Humbolt Murders. It takes an unflinching look all the people involved, including Brandon and again paints a picture of life in the rural midwest that is altogether bleak at times. Between the original documentary and this piece, you’ll have plenty of background.
PROLOGUE
Flash forward 20 years. The Atlantic revisited the murders within the context of progress on LGBT sensitivity and awareness training. A Buzzfeed article appeared the week after the 20th anniversary and one sentence in particular struck me:
“...his ghost is in danger of being forgotten. More people remember that Hilary Swank won an Oscar for a film called Boys Don’t Cry than they remember Brandon’s name or where he was from.”
I started making trips to Lincoln for work about 18 months prior and had forgotten about the murder location. The Buzzfeed piece piqued my interest in history and place. The fact that Humbolt, while rural, wasn’t too far out of my way coming or going between Lincoln and Kansas City. Thus, in early 2014, I determined to loop out there on one of my trips. Initially, I didn’t give it much thought, did no research, I’d just drive through Humbolt. Research would have been pointless for that trip: I ran into a virulent thunderstorm the size of Delaware. Even if I’d known details, I would have either been hit by lightening, blown into Iowa or drowned. The result was attempting to drive around the state of Delaware as I headed south so no trip to Humbolt.
SEARCHING
It would be another two years before I made the time to drive to Humbolt. This time I did some research regarding the actual scene. News accounts from the 90s showed photos of the house but no additional details other than “...in Humbolt Nebraska.”
First thing anyone does in the Internet age is fire up Teh Googlez and type in:
Brandon Teena murder scene
A number of forums and message boards showed postings by people who claim to have made the trek. Since 1997 when the author of the New Yorker piece went there, the house was still standing and still occupied; it remained a rental property. However, around 2014 when I started my prep work, people were posting variations of “Is the house still there?” Some said yes, some said no.
But no post gave specific details on the location. The best source was this comment thread:
Teena Brandon
One person claimed to be the owner of the house while another claimed to be Brandon’s niece now living in PA. Take them all with a grain of salt but it was clear some locals had posted to the forum back in 2007. The best description was:
“It is about 1and a half to 2 miles south of Humbuldt. If you drive in to Humboldt, go straight through the main road, you then see a highway. keep going and look to the west. It's a long driveway and leads right to the house. Sorry not too good on directions.”
Fortunately, somebody in that same comment thread visited the site in 2012. He made a YouTube video somewhat documenting the experience:
The important visual cues begin at 2:45. Pay close attention to the trees behind the house and more importantly, the shed on the right as you come down the gravel driveway:
The same person wrote a piece in 2015 for Curve Magazine still not giving any real directions.
Another YouTube video from late 2013 showed more or less the same thing:
Of course no directions were given. Nonetheless, I had more to go on. I found enough random forum entries by people who claimed to have been there since 2014 and the house had been demolished. Didn’t matter, I still wanted to find the site even if it was turned into the open prairie equivalent of a parking lot.
Enter Google Maps.
It was easy enough to “get” to Humbolt, then find the main drag south out of town (Route 105). Going from the various forum posts, I used a cycling website that allows you to stick markers on a route so you can calculate distance. The first overview map looks like this:
By dropping plot markers on Route 105 from the river going south, I could accurately calculate the distance.
Let’s zoom in. The mileage calculator nailed the gravel driveway location, even with the sloppy directions given by forum posters. See how Route 105 straightens out after that sweeping “S” curve? See the road that’s perpendicular to the main drag and the “L” shaped dark patch circled in red?
Let’s zoom in one more time. Bingo! You can see the shed and the tree line from the 2012 YouTube video. The house has definitely been demolished.
VISIT
I drove to Humbolt on 2 Dec 2016, stopping in the town mid-morning. Sunny and warm for a winter day on the edge of the high plains. Humbolt is like thousands of other rural, agricultural based towns in proverbial Flyover Country that have been in decline for decades; I’ve been through hundreds over the years, some are in better shape, others far worse. The only people in the town square were the few municipal employees and retirees getting coffee.
Heading south on 105 I immediately hit a snag: the bridge over the Big Nemeha river was closed due to construction. I headed east on Rt 4 and took the first gravel section road south that crossed the river. Then I backtracked west on a gravel section road until I hit 105, the result being I approached the site from the south.
The place was easy to see as it sits down somewhat from the highway. The YouTube video and Google Maps left little room for error.
I drove down to the shed, parked and took photos and shot video.
Because of the bridge closure, there were no vehicles. There was noise from the construction site which carried but for the most part it was quiet and slightly breezy. I’ve spent years stopping on the plains to soak in the vastness. There is a peaceful quality to such a setting; the breeze, the occasional bird and the rustling belied the violence that occurred here.
There is nothing to mark what happened. I stood there wondering about what might be possible without trespassing. Something that might not get torn up.
I then understood the emotional tug of the roadside memorial. It derives from a Catholic tradition in the Southwest where descansos (resting places), marked a spot where the funeral procession stopped to rest on the way to the cemetery. The markers placed at the spot served as a reminder in that religious tradition to pray for the dead.
Descansos also have a less religious interpretation from Mexican-American folklore, one that resonated with me: it marks the spot of an interrupted journey. They don’t necessarily mark a spot of death, rather a spot where a life’s path had been altered.
Brandon had a turbulent life complicated by the internal conflicts wrestling with gender identity in a time and place ill suited to help or support. It’s impossible to know where his path would have led but he was denied that chance. Two innocent people were also casualties not just of the violent expression of bigotry and ignorance but also of the criminal failure of local authorities to prosecute their duties. I couldn’t imagine a better interpretation for the site than a descansos.
EPILOGUE
I was back in Lincoln in Feb 2017, still wondering what little something I might do at the site to mark it’s importance. It’s an anonymous place. The lack of recognition, even something as humble as a descansos, robs it of significance. I didn’t want anything too obvious because I’m uncertain how it would be viewed. Few people outside of the area will ever go there; nonetheless, people should know that something happened to someone nearby. I’ve read how ad-hoc memorials at the place where Matthew Shepherd was beaten and left to die have been periodically removed. I decided to attempt something that wouldn’t be too obvious unless you knew it was there.
Hobby Lobby provided the answer. Oh the irony. Finished hearts! I had some binder rings so fashioned holes in each heart, then with a Sharpie put the names Lisa Lambert, Phillip DeVine and Brandon Teena on each heart with “RIP” on the back. On my way home from Lincoln, I drove to the site and attached the hearts to the old, metal address sign.
This is temporary at best. Those slices of wood and Sharpie ink won’t last long. I’ll be back there in early May and will check. I’m thinking a better approach would be an application of the Love Lock phenomenon. Heart-shaped padlocks are easy to find and you can always spray paint em red.
I hope this diary makes it easier for people to visit the site, even if it means just standing at the gate. With that in mind, I’ve created a Google Map:
Humbolt Triple Murder Site
You can also view the high res photos of the site, shots of Humbolt itself and the graves of Lisa and Brandon here:
Photo Collection
Brandon is buried in Lincoln under his given, female name. Lisa Lambert is buried in Pawnee City. Phillip DeVine is buried near Fairfield Iowa. While Brandon’s death is often cited along with the murder of Matthew Shepard five years later as the triggers for national hate crime legislation, all three victims are now scattered memories and remains.
The one commonality they unfortunately share is where they were murdered, now an anonymous, quiet alcove in the trees on the edge of the high prairie.