Defendant
"disgusted" to learn that Gwen Araujo was not a woman

Testifying at his retrial for the murder of transgender teen Gwen Araujo in Northern Califonria nearly three years ago, one of three men accused in the slaying on Tuesday said he had been disgusted to learn that Araujo was not the woman he thought he'd had sex with. But he added that he did not want her to die that night, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. "She never should have been killed," said Jose Merel, 25, who was testifying for the first time at the retrial. "There was nothing she did to deserve death."

Merel admitted that he had slapped the 17-year-old Araujo twice and struck her head with a frying pan as a show of "solidarity to my friends." He said he was devastated when friends at a party revealed that Araujo--who called herself Lida and with whom Merel had previously had anal sex--was biologically male. "It's hard to explain," Merel said in the Hayward, Calif., courtroom. "Your whole life you think you're a heterosexual. Then you get pleasure from a homosexual. It disgusted me."

Merel did not testify at the first trial, which ended in June 2004 with the jury deadlocked on charges against him and two other men, Michael Magidson and Jason Cazares, both 25. A fourth man, Jaron Nabors, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and testified against the others. The case, and the mistrial, outraged transgender activists. The retrial began last month.

Wearing glasses and a white sweater in court, according to the Chronicle, Merel said he had vomited and then cried when a woman at the October 3, 2003, party at his home blurted out that Araujo had male genitalia. "Emotionally, I was crushed," he said, his voice at times hardly audible. When the two had met months before, Merel said, he thought "Lida" was "very attractive." "I thought it was impossible to derive pleasure from a man unless you were gay," he said. "I was having serious questions about my sexuality."

Merel said he had slapped Araujo twice as others punched her and pushed her up against a wall. He said he then went into the kitchen, grabbed a tin can, and tried to scare Araujo with it. He then picked up a frying pan and hit her in the head, he said. Araujo then said, "I told you I was sorry," Merel testified, the last words he heard her speak that night.

Merel said he was scrubbing Araujo's blood from the carpets and couch as Nabors and Cazares watched Magidson bind Araujo's ankles with a rope. He said he then retreated to his room because he did not want to cry in front of his friends again. When his attorney, William DuBois, asked Merel why he had not done anything to help Araujo, Merel took a long pause. "I don't know," he answered. "I don't really have an answer to that."

Still, Merel said he thought Araujo was alive until Cazares brought him outside and he saw Araujo's body wrapped in a blanket in the back of Magidson's truck. "Nobody ever mentioned killing her," he said. Prosecutors say Magidson pulled a rope toward Araujo's neck after she had been tied up, and the accused killers buried Araujo's body in El Dorado National Forest.

Merel said he felt horrible as he dug Araujo's grave. "Honestly, to me, I was worrying how long it would take for the police to get to the house, how long before we were arrested," Merel said. "Anytime you do a crime, they always find you. It was the worst day of my life." On the ride home, Merel said, Magidson said he was not sure Araujo had died until she was hit with a shovel. Merel's attorney has seized on that point to try to show that Merel's earlier blows to Araujo's head were only glancing, not fatal as prosecutors have suggested.

Araujo's killing came as Newark Memorial High School prepared a performance of The Laramie Project, a play about the 1998 killing of gay college student Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyo., where he was beaten, tied to a fence, and left to die.