Ubiñas: Transgender woman's death brings long overdue awareness

DEJA ALVAREZ has lost count of the times she has come to the Criminal Justice Center on Filbert Street.

"Oh my God, I can't even remember anymore," she said, before settling on four.

Each time, the case against the man accused of stabbing and dismembering her friend Diamond Williams, on July 14, 2013, was continued for one reason or another. Mostly because lawyers and doctors were trying to figure out whether Charles Nolan Sargent was sane enough to stand trial in the brutal slaying of a transgender woman whose grandmother said was born Mark William Woods.

Despite Sargent's refusal to participate in a psychiatric evaluation and his lawyer's lingering doubts about his competence, Sargent was finally found competent in July, a year after he was accused of the grisly death.

And then yesterday, 15 months after he allegedly hacked 31-year-old Williams to pieces, Sargent entered Courtroom 306 for a preliminary hearing.

It was the first time Alvarez, a peer-outreach worker for Mazzoni Center's Trans Wellness Project, and other friends seated on the hard benches in the gallery saw Sargent, 45. He walked in, shackled and cuffed, his dark-circled eyes searching the room when he wasn't yawning. At one point, he turned and seemed to look at the group.

"Did you see that?" Alvarez said. "I don't scare easily and I don't say this lightly, but he looked like pure evil. It looked like he was looking right through us."

The group of friends had already heard most of the gory details in press accounts: How Sargent allegedly picked up Williams for sex on July 13, 2013, and took her back to his house on 32nd Street near Diamond Street in Strawberry Mansion. How he stabbed her to death, police say, after discovering she had been born a man, and then dismembered her in the basement of his home with borrowed tools. How Sargent dumped her remains over seven trips in a weedy lot on Sedgley Avenue near York Street.

They couldn't help but tear up when Assistant District Attorney Geoffrey MacArthur listed the body parts that were discovered and delivered to the medical examiner's office: a head, neck, chest, both lower legs . . .

They looked disgusted when Sargent's longtime fiance, Veronica Johnson, described how on the morning of July 14, after coming home from work, she lay on a couch and watched as Sargent dragged a sheet covering what appeared to be a body down the stairs to the basement. And how later she saw him take large plastic bags and a hatchet down before she heard banging.

She knew something was going on, she testified. But she never confronted Sargent or tried to find out what happened. After he threatened her life and those of her children, police were finally called.

Police Detective Paul Guercio testified that in Sargent's 18-page statement, he maintained that he killed Williams "in self-defense," saying Williams misrepresented herself as a woman. After Williams refused to leave until being paid the $40 they agreed on, Sargent said he stabbed Williams to death with a screwdriver during a struggle. He then cut up the body and dumped it.

Alvarez said that as difficult as it was to hear the disturbing details of her friend's last moments, Sargent's defense was equally sickening.

"That's always what these guys say," she said. "And 99 percent of the time it's a lie. These men know who they are picking up. This guy knew. He was known in the community."

Sargent was held for trial for murder and related offenses. His next court appearance is scheduled for Oct. 29.

Alvarez and other friends said they will be there. They owe it to Williams and so many other transgender women whose deaths remain unsolved, including Nizah Morris, Kyra Kruz and Stacey Blahnik Lee, whom Alvarez considered family.

Outside the courtroom, Alvarez said that before Williams' gruesome death captured headlines, the abuse and deaths of fellow transgender men and women barely garnered a blip in the press or public consciousness. That has slowly started to change, she said.

"While we were in there, I was thinking that I hoped that Diamond and Stacey were looking down and saw that their deaths were helping get the attention and awareness that they should have gotten a long time ago."

The Philly Trans March will be held on Saturday at LOVE Park from 3 to 6 p.m.

Phone: 215-854-5943

On Twitter: @NotesFromHel