Lorenzo Okaruru, better known as Loni Kai, was a twenty-eight-year-old transgender woman living in western Washington County, Oregon. It appears that Loni had been out and about on the night of Friday, August 25th, 2001, and at around two a.m. on the morning of the 26th, she was seen at a 7-Eleven convenience store near the intersection of Cornelius Pass Road and Southwest TV Highway. Loni was speaking to another woman inside the store.
About an hour and a half later, Loni was spotted walking along the highway near Southwest Murray Boulevard. She may have been attempting to hitch a ride. At one point, a Beaverton police officer pulled up alongside her in his cruiser and asked if she needed help or a lift, but Loni said no, she was fine. Only a short time later, she would be dead.
At approximately eight a.m. on August 26th, a jogger found Loni’s remains partially concealed by bushes in a field not far from the place where she had last been seen. She had been beaten to death with what appeared to be a metal bar or aluminum baseball bat. The perpetrator had completely smashed in the victim’s face, and had also cut off her fingertips.
Police theorized that the perpetrator may have picked Loni up on the highway and became enraged on discovering that she was transgender. They also surmised that due to the distance between the road and the location where the remains were dumped, there may have been at least two attackers, and that they were probably driving a larger vehicle, such as a mid-size SUV, in which they could have transported the body.
The murder of Loni Kai is the only known, unsolved hate crime in Washington County, and a reward is still on offer for information leading to a conviction of the killer or killers.
Crime Immemorial 