Local
D.C. man found guilty in gay murder
Defendant accused of using chat line to lure ‘faggy’ for robbery
Murder victim Anthony Perkins. (Blade file photo)
A D.C. Superior Court jury Tuesday found a District man guilty of first-degree murder while armed in the December 2009 shooting death of gay D.C. resident Anthony Perkins, whom police say met his killer through a gay telephone chat line.
The jury returned its verdict after deliberating for a little more than five hours following a five-day trial in which prosecutors said Antwan Holcomb, 21, shot Perkins in the head in Perkins’ car after luring him to a secluded street in Southeast Washington.
A witness who knew Holcomb testified that he overheard Holcomb say on the night of the murder that he “shot the ‘faggy’ in the head and robbed him of a pack of Newport cigarettes” before leaving Perkins’ Lincoln Town Car and fleeing the scene on foot.
“The price that the defendant put on the head of Mr. Perkins was a pack of cigarettes,” Assistant United States Attorney Steven Swaney, one of two prosecutors in the case, told the jury on Tuesday.
Chief Judge Lee Satterfield, who presided over the trial, scheduled Holcomb’s sentencing for May 5.
Perkins, 29, lived with his mother, Stella Perkins, who testified at the trial that her son’s murder was a devastating loss. He worked as a dispatcher for an air conditioning and heating company and enjoyed meeting people on phone chat lines, witnesses said during the trial.
Swaney and Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Liebman presented law enforcement witnesses who pointed to phone records showing that Holcomb made repeated calls to a phone chat line called D.C. Raven. The chat line has separate lines for a variety of groups and interests, including a section with “gay chat numbers.”
Government witnesses testified that Holcomb met Perkins on the chat line on the night of Dec. 26, 2009 and engaged him in several conversations. The two exchanged their own phone numbers, the prosecutors said. Authorities later tracked the calls Holcomb made to Perkins on the night of the murder from a landline in a residence at 500 Lebaum St., S.E., where he had been staying.
“He stated that he posed as a homosexual in an attempt to lure a victim to his location for the purpose of robbing him,” according to a police affidavit used for Holcomb’s arrest in March 2010.
At the trial, prosecutors showed the jury a video of Holcomb being questioned by homicide detectives. Holcomb admitted to detectives that he talked to Perkins through the chat line and persuaded him to meet him on the night of the murder. But he denied he killed Perkins. Holcomb told the detectives in the taped interrogation that it was someone else who looked like him that entered Perkins’ car and shot Perkins. Police said Holcomb refused to identify that person.
The two prosecutors argued during the trial Holcomb fabricated that claim to get off the hook in the murder.
In the video recording of the interrogation session presented to the jury, one of the detectives joked with Holcomb about his decision to call a gay-oriented chat line. At one point, Holcomb said men using the chat line have money and likely would not report being robbed from someone they met through such a venue.
“I’m not of that nature … I’m a cold-blooded man,” he told the detectives. “I don’t like fags. I never will.”
At the time of Holcomb’s arraignment following his arrest in March 2010, Liebman told the Blade the U.S. Attorney’s office might consider asking a grand jury to classify the case as a hate crime. A subsequent grand jury indictment against Holcomb did not classify the case as a hate crime.
At the time the jury rendered its verdict Tuesday, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s office said Liebman and Swaney would not be immediately available to discuss the case.
Defense attorney Ronald Horton argued that there were no eye witnesses to the murder. He said one of the government’s lead witnesses, who said she saw Holcomb near the scene of the murder, was drunk at the time.
Horton said another key witness, a woman who once dated Horton, was biased against him because she caught him in bed with another woman. She should not be taken at her word for testifying that Holcomb entered her bedroom and placed a gun under the bed shortly after the murder took place, he told the jury.
He noted that Holcomb’s finger prints and DNA were not found inside Perkins’ car, supporting Holcomb’s claim that it was someone else that entered Perkins’ Lincoln Town Car and shot him point blank in the head.
Saying the jury was obligated under the law not to find Holcomb guilty unless the government proves its case beyond a reasonable doubt, told the jury, “This case is full of reasonable doubt.”
In his rebuttal arguments, co-prosecutor Swaney recited a litany of evidence he said provided proof beyond a doubt that Holcomb committed the murder.
Among other things, he pointed to Holcomb’s arrest for an unrelated incident on Dec. 12, in which he was charged with shooting two men outside the Player’s Lounge, a popular Southeast D.C. nightclub that has hosted events organized by gay activists.
Swaney pointed to police and firearm experts’ testimony that the bullet removed from Perkins’ head had been fired from the same gun that Holcomb allegedly used to shoot the two men outside the Player’s Lounge, one of whom is paralyzed from the waist down as a result of the gunshot wound.
Several letters that Holcomb wrote to a female friend while in jail following his arrest asked the friend to arrange for others to tell police that they saw someone other than Holcomb enter Perkins’ car on the night of the murder, Swaney noted to the jury. He called this a clear attempt by Holcomb to get people to help him conceal his involvement in a murder.
In addition to the first-degree murder charge, the jury found Holcomb guilty of armed robbery, unlawful possession of a firearm, and carrying a pistol without a license.
The D.C. group Gays and Lesbians Opposing Violence has raised concern over reports of gay men being targeted by criminals on telephone and Internet chat lines.
A widely reported case came four months after Perkins’ murder, when Montgomery County police disclosed that gay D.C. middle school principal Brian Betts, who was found murdered in his Silver Spring, Md., home last April, met one or more of the four teenage males charged in the case through an Internet sex chat line.
District of Columbia
Bet Mishpachah participates in D.C. Oct. 7 commemoration ceremony
Wednesday marked three years since Hamas attacked Israel
Bet Mishpachah Executive Director Joshua Maxey on Wednesday was among those who spoke at a ceremony in D.C. that marked the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack in Israel.
The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington hosted the ceremony that took place at the Washington Hebrew Congregation in Northwest D.C. Bet Mishpachah is the city’s LGBTQ synagogue.
“It was a deeply moving evening, especially hearing the stories of people who knew those who were murdered and those who survived and experiencing music that gave a voice to grief and hope,” Maxey told the Washington Blade.
Hamas militants on Oct. 7, 2023, killed roughly 1,200 people, including upwards of 360 partygoers at the Nova Music Festival near Re’im, a kibbutz that is a couple miles from the Gaza Strip, when it launched its surprise attack on Israel. The militants also kidnapped more than 200 people.
The Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry says Israeli forces have killed more than 74,000 people in the enclave since Oct. 7.
The International Criminal Court in 2024 issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant; former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar; Mohamed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri, the head of Hamas’s military wing known as the Qassam Brigades; and Ismail Haniyeh, chair of the Hamas Political Bureau, after it accused them of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza and Israel.
The Israeli government has strongly denied it has committed genocide in Gaza.
An Israeli airstrike on a compound in Khan Younis, a city in southern Gaza, on July 13, 2024, killed killed Deif, one of the alleged Oct. 7 masterminds. Israel less than three weeks later assassinated Haniyah in Tehran, the Iranian capital. Israel Defense Forces soldiers on Oct. 16, 2024, killed Sinwar in Rafah, a city in southern Gaza.
Hamas last October released the remaining hostages in Gaza as part of a ceasefire agreement that President Donald Trump helped broker. Israel has continued to conduct airstrikes and other military operations in Gaza since the official suspension of hostilities took effect.
“For Bet Mishpachah, it was especially meaningful to lift up the names of LGBTQ+ people, those whose identities we know and those whose stories may never be fully known, who were murdered, and to honor the LGBTQ+ survivors whose resilience continues to inspire us,” said Maxey, referring to his participation in Wednesday’s ceremony. “Emily Damari’s story is particularly poignant: while held hostage, she had to hide the fact that she was gay because she feared that revealing her identity to her captors could put her life at even more risk. Yet, she survived.”
“Her story, like so many others, reminds us of the extraordinary courage it takes simply to remain human in the face of hatred,” he added. “May we continue to remember and to mourn, to honor, and to work toward a future rooted in peace and hope.”
Virginia
Campaign urges Virginia High School League to reverse stance on trans athletes
Equality Arlington and other advocacy groups behind ‘Right 2 Play’ VA’ initiative
Virginia advocacy groups have launched a campaign that urges the Virginia High School League to once again allow student athletes to compete on sports teams that correspond with their gender identity.
Equality Arlington on Sept. 16 published an article about the “Right 2 Play VA” campaign. Amy, a group representative, spoke about the initiative with the Washington Blade.
“The primary goal is to reverse the Virginia High School League’s discriminatory ban on allowing transgender girls to play on girls’ sports and replace it with a policy that is fair for all students.” they said.
The Virginia High School League in 2025 announced the policy, which reversed a previous position in support of transgender and nonbinary athletes. The 2025 policy coincided with President Donald Trump’s executive order — “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” — that threatened to “rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities, which results in the endangerment, humiliation, and silencing of women and girls.”
The Arlington Gender Identity Alliance, Equality Virginia, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia have also joined the “Right 2 Play VA” campaign.
“We had a policy in Virginia for 12 years that allowed transgender girls to play on girls’ sports teams, and we had not one instance — not one instance — that was brought forward demonstrating an unfair advantage or any type of safety concern,” said Amy.
Amy then discussed what they described are the benefits of trans youth playing sports.
“There are physical benefits. There are mental health benefits. There are community and social development benefits, and those are all well documented,” they said. “All kids should have the right to benefit from playing youth sports. We are talking about kids. We are talking about youth. We are not talking about Olympians. We are not talking about Division One college athletes. We are talking about kids in Virginia, and because the benefits of sports are so well documented, we think that every kid should have the ability to play sports.”
District of Columbia
D.C.’s LGBTQ homeless facilities face possible hit from Trump funding cuts
38 percent of homeless youth identify as LGBTQ, up from 2025
(Editor’s note: This article is part of our 2026 contribution to the D.C. Homeless Crisis Reporting Project in collaboration with other local newsrooms. The collective works will be published throughout the week at bit.ly/DCHCRP.)
A decision by President Trump’s administration to eliminate most federal funding for community-based programs to place homeless people in permanent subsidized housing could have a severe adverse impact on LGBTQ people facing homelessness in D.C., according to local advocates.
Officials with organizations that provide services for homeless people in the D.C. area and nationally have pointed to an executive order issued by Trump last year that calls for ending federal support for so-called “Housing First” programs that arrange for permanent subsidized housing for homeless people. The officials note that Trump’s proposed fiscal year 2027 budget calls for eliminating funding for the Housing First programs.
Advocates for programs providing support for homeless people note that ending federal funding for permanent housing for homeless people will — and in some cases already has — resulted in occupants of homeless shelters and short-term transitional housing facilities remaining in those facilities far longer than in the past, preventing openings for others who need housing.
A lawsuit filed by several states and homeless advocacy organizations, including the D.C.-based National Alliance To End Homelessness, to block the Trump efforts to cut off those funds has temporarily delayed some of the funding cuts. A decision in August by a federal judge in Rhode Island declared the Trump action a violation of a federal law for failing to open the proposal for the funding cuts to public comment before putting it in place.
Court records show the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which provides the federal funding for homeless related programs, appealed the lower court ruling and an appeals court reversed the ruling pending further appeal by the parties that filed the lawsuit.
At least two of the five D.C. organizations that provide housing for homeless LGBTQ youth have said their funding so far has not been cut due to the Trump actions.
Cesar Toledo, executive director of the Wanda Alston Foundation, which currently provides transitional housing for 20 LGBTQ homeless youth, said his organization receives local D.C. government funding but no federal funding so his group has so far not been impacted by the Trump action.
Debby Shore, executive director of the Sasha Bruce Youthwork organization that provides housing for young people ages 18-24, including some LGBTQ youth, said her organization also had not yet been impacted but it could be impacted soon.
“We have not had that funding cut,” she told the Washington Blade. “What we understand is if HUD is allowed to go through with those changes, then we will,” she said. “Because we have one of our programs that’s funded directly by HUD,” which she said could be considered the type of “long term” housing that HUD wants to cut.
A spokesperson for the local LGBTQ youth advocacy organization SMYAL, which currently provides housing for 55 homeless LGBTQ youth according to its website, didn’t immediately respond to a Blade inquiry into whether they have been impacted by the Trump actions. Toledo of the Alston Foundation said he understood that SMYAL has received federal funding for its homeless program.
At least two other D.C. organizations that provide housing for homeless youth, including some LGBTQ youth – Covenant House and the Latin American Youth Center – also couldn’t immediately be reached for comment on whether they have been impacted by the Trump funding cuts.
The city’s only shelter for homeless LGBTQ adults, which is operated by the D.C. Department of Human Services and is D.C. funded, has not been immediately impacted by the Trump funding cuts, according to a DHS statement sent to the Washington Blade in response to a Blade inquiry. Called Living Life Alternative, the low-barrier shelter accommodates 40 individuals, the statement says.
It says DHS receives federal funding for its homeless services programs, and it was awaiting HUD approval for its annual federal funding grant for the city’s Permanent Supportive Housing program for homeless residents. It says the current funding for that program expires Jan. 31, 2027.
According to the statement, a separate federal grant DHS receives from HUD for homeless assistance services was approved for next year but included “a slight reduction in funding of $22,808.”
The annual 2026 Point-In-Time (PIT) count of homeless people in D.C., conducted in January, recorded a total of 5,363 people who were homeless, a 4 percent increase over the previous year.
The PIT count report shows 424 adults, or 12 percent of the adults counted, identified as members of the LGBTQ community, a slight increase over the 11.7 percent of homeless LGBTQ people counted in 2025. It shows that 38 percent of “Transition Age Youth” ages 18-24 identified as LGBTQ, an increase of one percent over the 37 percent of LGBTQ youth counted in 2025.
The Trump administration through HUD has said it supports housing for homeless people that lasts no more than two years and participants should be required to get treatment for the mental illness and substance use disorders such as drug addiction and alcoholism that many homeless people suffer from.
The Washington Post has cited studies showing that up to two-thirds of homeless people have a mental illness and two in five have a substance use disorder.
“Housing First has failed our most vulnerable and enabled addiction,” the Post quoted HUD saying in an email message. “HUD’s proposed reforms seek to address the root cause of homelessness and advance recovery, self-sufficiency, and competition that drives accountability,” the Post quoted the HUD statement as saying.
Shore, director of Sasha Bruce Youthwork, disputes that assessment, saying treatment for disorders should not be a replacement for longer term housing programs, which she said improves the outcome of treatments for disorders.
“I think the idea of putting more services in place – I don’t have any problem with that,” she said. “But suggesting that you do that in exchange for longer term supports for people does not seem to be the right way to go.”
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PHOTOS: Winchester Pride
