District of Columbia
New appeal for help in solving 1987 D.C. gay murder case
U.S. Navy commander was fatally stabbed outside Chesapeake House gay bar
The family of a 43-year-old gay U.S. Navy commander who was stabbed to death shortly after midnight on Jan. 1, 1987, minutes after he left a D.C. gay bar in a yet unsolved case considered a hate crime, is appealing to the public for help in providing police with a tip that may lead to the identity of two male suspects.
D.C. police at the time of the murder said Commander Gregory Peirce, an Alexandria, Va., resident who served as a staff officer at the Pentagon, was approached by two men appearing to be in their early 20s as he and a man he was with left the Chesapeake House, a gay bar at 946 9th St., N.W. at about 12:15 a.m.
A Washington Blade story published on Jan. 9, 1987, reported that police sources familiar with the investigation said one of the male suspects stabbed Peirce in the chest and neck, then kicked him repeatedly while he lay unconscious at the site of the stabbing in a parking lot behind the Chesapeake House.
The second suspect chased the man who was with Peirce toward the entrance of the bar, slashing the back of the man’s coat with a knife as the man sought help from the Chesapeake House doorman, Tom Vaughn, police sources told the Blade.
A police spokesperson said Peirce was pronounced dead about 90 minutes later at George Washington University Hospital as a result of a severed neck artery, the Blade reported. The man he was with, who told police what he observed, was not injured.
Amanda Soderlund, Peirce’s niece, told the Blade she and her family remain hopeful that the two young men involved in the fatal stabbing 36 years ago could be brought to justice.
She said her beloved uncle, who did not openly identify as gay while serving in the Navy, was just a few months away from retiring and being honorably discharged from the Navy.
“My uncle was an incredible man,” Soderlund said in an Oct. 5 phone interview. “We have a very large family,” she said, and family members have long tried to find out exactly what happened and why when Gregory Peirce became D.C.’s first homicide victim of 1987.
Longtime D.C. police homicide Detective Danny Whalen, who is assigned to the homicide unit’s Cold Case Squad, told the Blade last week that the Peirce murder case is among the large number of old homicide cases that cannot be solved unless new information surfaces.
“You know, we would love nothing more than to bring these people to justice,” Whalen said of the two unidentified suspects in the Peirce murder. “The detectives who worked the case at the time exhausted everything in their power,” said Whalen. “And if they could have made an arrest, they would have.”
Whalen noted that the two suspects, who witnesses said appeared to be in their 20s, would likely be in their late 50s or early 60s at this time, assuming they are still alive. Whalen and other law enforcement officials have said for investigators to make an arrest in an old case like this, one or more people who know something about the case and who may have known the two suspects need to come forward with information.
Soderlund, Peirce’s niece, said she has reached out to the Blade and may reach out to other news media outlets to draw attention to the case, with the hope that someone reading about it in the press might just come forward with a tip that could lead to an arrest.
“The Metropolitan Police Department currently offers a reward of up to $25,000 to anyone that provides information which leads to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for each homicide committed in the District of Columbia,” according to a D.C. police statement issued at the time police announce a new unsolved murder case.
The statement says anyone with information about a case should call police at 202-727-9099. It says anonymous information can be submitted to the department’s TEXT TIP LINE by sending a text message to 50411.
Although other news media outlets, including the Washington Post, initially reported that police said the motive for the attack against Peirce and his companion appeared to be a robbery gone bad, police sources and witnesses from the Chesapeake House told the Blade the incident appeared to be an anti-gay hate crime or gay bashing.
The man who was with Pierce told police the incident began when the two male suspects approached the two men as they left the Chesapeake House and one of them said, “Wonder if they have any money,” according to an account by the Washington Post.
But the man accompanying Peirce also told police the two attackers never specifically asked for or demanded money. Words were exchanged between the four men in the parking lot and a fight broke out, police sources said, which led to Peirce being stabbed.
At least two police sources said the man who stabbed Peirce had time to search for Pierce’s wallet while Pierce was lying unconscious in the parking lot, but the attacker did not do so.
Instead, the attacker began kicking Pierce repeatedly while he lay motionless and bleeding, one of the police sources told the Blade back in January 1987. “For all practical purposes [Pierce] was dead when this guy was kicking him,” the source said.
In its Jan. 9, 1987, story on the Peirce murder, the Blade reported that experts familiar with anti-gay violence, including police investigators, consider the action by one of the two suspects in the Peirce case who repeatedly kicked Peirce while he lay unconscious as a form of “over kill” often triggered by a deeply held hatred toward and fear of homosexuality.
Chesapeake House employee Michael Sellers told the Blade the week following the murder that a group of young males were yelling anti-gay names, such as “faggot” and “queer,” at several Chesapeake House patrons and another of the bar’s employees when the patrons and employee stood outside the bar about an hour before Peirce was stabbed.
One of the employees and two of the patrons told the Blade the males who were shouting at them appeared to match the descriptions of the two men who attacked Peirce and the man with Peirce. But homicide detective Whalen told the Blade last week that there is no definitive evidence that the young man who stabbed Peirce was among the group that shouted anti-gay names prior to the stabbing.
The Chesapeake House, which opened sometime in the 1970s and featured nude male dancers, closed in 1992 shortly before its building was demolished to make way for a new high rise office building.
In reviewing the information he is aware of about the case Det. Whalen said that while it appears to be a hate crime, the exact motive of the murder has yet to be confirmed.
“It’s one of those things where it was a street attack,” said Whalen. “Their intentions were never stated,” he said. “However, it was either a hate crime or a street robbery or a combination of both.”
LGBTQ activists at the time said they believed it was a hate crime. And they expressed concern and anger that the news media at the time, other than the Blade, did not report that the stabbing incident took place minutes after Peirce and the man he was with left a gay bar.
In a Jan. 2, 1987, story, one day after the murder took place, the Washington Post reported that Navy officials told Peirce’s brother that Peirce and a group of friends had come to D.C. that night to attend the city’s New Year’s celebration at the Old Post Office building at 12th and Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., which is located about a half mile away from the Chesapeake House.
Other news media accounts left the impression that the murder may have been related to assaults that had taken place among the large crowds of people who turned out for past New Year’s celebrations outside the Old Post Office building.
The Post article reported that police said the stabbing took place in the 900 block of H Street, N.W. and that Peirce and the man he was with had just left a bar that the article did not identify by name.
“The truth was being held back,” Chesapeake House employee Michael Sellers told the Blade.
Soderlund said she and other Peirce family members have speculated that officials with the Navy may have wanted to downplay or hide the fact that a Navy commander who worked at the Pentagon was gay and was attacked after leaving a gay bar.
At that time, under longstanding U.S. military policy, active-duty military members discovered to be gay, lesbian, or bisexual were almost always discharged from the service as potential security risks. The so called ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy initiated by President Bill Clinton, which eased the anti-gay policy to a small degree, did not take effect until 1994.
Soderlund told the Blade she and her family members thought there was more to Peirce’s murder than a street robbery, but they had little information to go on until she contacted one of the two Washington Post reporters who wrote the Post’s initial story on the case. That reporter, John Ward Anderson, who has since retired, informed her about the Blade’s possible coverage of the story and suggested she contact the Blade.
Anderson told the Blade that the Post was not aware of information by police sources that the murder was a possible hate crime at the time the Post published its initial story on the case. He said the Post would have mentioned the possible anti-gay angle to the case had it known about it.
When Soderlund contacted the Blade, the Blade sent her a copy of the Blade’s Jan. 9, 1987, story, which Soderlund said provided information about the case that she and other family members were not aware of, including information that the murder was likely an anti-gay hate crime.
In yet another development in the ongoing saga of her uncle’s murder, Soderlund said she reached out to Det. Whalen, who gave her the name of the man who was with Peirce at the time of the murder and informed her that the man had died of natural causes in 1994 at the age of 58. In doing an online search, she found a May 1, 1997, Washington Post story about this man, Orrin W. Macleod, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and member of the U.S. Merchant Marines before becoming a ground crew employee at Washington National Airport.
“He never reached out to our family,” Soderlund said. “We never heard from him,” she said, adding that she has long assumed, like her uncle, Macleod was not out as gay and most likely did not want to speak out publicly about the Peirce murder.
But the Post article about him said he became a hero of sorts in Fairfax County shortly before he died of leukemia when he donated most of his life savings and inherited wealth of $1 million to the Fairfax County Public Library.
“The money, at Macleod’s request, will be invested in books on tape, which he used near the end of his life when his vision was impaired,” the Post article states.
Soderlund said it’s her understanding that Fairfax Public Library officials were unaware that the generous donation they received was from a gay man who survived a violent attack that took the life of her uncle.
Shortly after the murder, D.C. police spokesperson Quintin Peterson described one of the men involved in the Peirce murder as being Black, with dark-complected skin, about 5-feet-9 inches tall, slender, with a mustache and wearing dark glasses, a blue knit hat, a dark blue jacket, and dark pants.
Peterson described the second man involved in the murder as being Black with a medium complexion, about 5-feet-9 inches tall, with hair on his chin, and wearing a green coat, a light-colored knit hat, and dark pants.
Police sources said witnesses told police the two attackers calmly walked away from the scene of the crime along H Street, with their whereabouts unknown.
In keeping with longstanding D.C. police policy, a reward of up to $25,000 is offered to anyone providing information leading to an arrest and conviction of persons responsible for a homicide committed in D.C.
Anyone with information should contact police at 202-727-9099 or submit an anonymous tip to the department’s TEXT TIP LINE by sending a text message to 50411.
District of Columbia
D.C.-area schools to protest Trump’s ‘assault on public education’
Students unite against Trump’s education cuts in unprecedented protest
Student government leaders from multiple D.C.-area schools are coming together to protest recent Trump administration actions aimed at restricting student rights in America.
On Friday, April 4, at 4 p.m., the student governments of Georgetown, George Washington, Howard, American, George Mason, and Temple plan to protest the Trump-Vance administration’s efforts to dismantle public education at the Department of Education building (400 Maryland Ave., S.W.), just south of the National Mall. This “unprecedented coalition” of higher education student governments in the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia region, representing 130,000 students, will gather to tell the administration to keep its “Hands Off Our Schools.”
In a statement emailed to the Washington Blade, Asher Maxwell, press coordinator for the Georgetown University Student Association, called this a “historic coalition” and said the protest will highlight how Trump’s policies—dismantling the Department of Education, eradicating DEI initiatives, eliminating funding for academic programs and financial aid, and silencing student voices—are affecting students.
Former middle school principal and U.S. Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York, along with campus free speech advocate Mary Beth Tinker, known for her role in Tinker v. Des Moines, are slated to speak at the rally about the importance of public education and free speech amid what they call the administration’s disregard for the rule of law and constitutionally protected acts such as protesting and speaking out against the government.
The rally is expected to draw thousands of students, from college to kindergarten, as well as First Amendment supporters and those angered by the administration’s efforts to minimize the federal government. Since taking office, Trump has laid off tens of thousands of federal employees, including many within the Department of Education, as he and his senior adviser, Elon Musk, strip away protections and federal spending that disproportionately affect LGBTQ people, people of color, and students.
The Washington Blade reached out to the White House for comment but has not received a response.
District of Columbia
D.C. police investigating anti-gay assault in Shaw
Police say suspect punched victim in face after shouting ‘homophobic slurs’
D.C. police are investigating a March 7, 2025, assault case listed as a suspected hate crime in which an unidentified male suspect punched a man in the face on the sidewalk outside an apartment building after calling the victim and his male friend “faggots.”
The victim, Destin Karol, and his friend, Ian Dotson, both residents of Arlington, Va., told the Washington Blade the assault took place about 10 p.m. while they were walking along 7th Street, N.W. on their way to the Shaw-Howard University Metro station.
The two men said while walking in front of the upscale 7th Flats apartment building at 1825 7th St., N.W., they saw the male suspect and a woman he was with get out of a car parked in front of the building. Seconds later, they saw the woman vomiting on the sidewalk as they walked past her, the two men told the Blade.
At that time, the male suspect yelled, “What are you looking at, faggots,” Karol and Dotson told the Blade. The suspect then punched Karol in the face “several times,” according to a D.C. police report.
Karol said he was diagnosed the next day at a hospital in Arlington near his home with a broken jaw that required the jaw to be wired shut.
Dotson said D.C. police arrived on the scene after he called 911 after witnessing the suspect punching Karol, knocking him down and kicking Karol in the face while he was lying on the sidewalk.
Karol said an ambulance arrived on the scene and paramedics treated his facial injury with an ice pack and offered to take him to the hospital. He said he declined the offer, choosing to go home first. But upon experiencing intense pain the next day, he visited a medical clinic whose doctors told him to immediately go to the nearby hospital emergency room.
An initial version of the D.C. police incident report did not list the incident as a suspected hate crime. But a revised version of the report, which was issued after the Blade contacted police to ask about the earlier report, classifies the incident as a “suspected hate crime.”
The revised report states that the suspect, after telling the victim, “What are you looking at,” proceeded to “close fist strike Victim 1 in the left jaw area several times.” It says Subject 2, who was Dotson, told police the suspect “yelled out homophobic slurs.”
The report concludes by saying, Suspect 1 “was last seen heading inside 1825 7th Street, N.W.”
According to Karol, police so far have not changed the report, at Karol’s request, to list the incident as an ‘aggravated assault’ rather than its current listing as a “simple assault.” Karol points out that under police policy, an assault-related injury that causes a broken bone should be classified as an aggravated assault.
Karol and Dotson said the police report also does not mention that they told the two police officers who arrived on the scene that they saw the suspect and the woman he was with get out of a car and they showed the two officers which car it was as it was parked in front of the apartment building.
Karol told the Blade he and Dotson asked at least one of the officers to take down the license plate number of the car, but the officer said it was not necessary for him to do so. Dotson said he recalls that the car was a white, 4-door Volkswagen hatchback with a Virginia license plate.
Dotson said he and Karol were disappointed that the police did not appear to take down the license number and he regrets that he did not write it down himself. But he said he recalls that the Virginia license tag consisted of all letters and no numbers, with the letters “IN” as part of it.
He described the suspect as a white male appearing to be between 35 or 45 years old with brown hair and a goatee or beard.
D.C. police spokesperson Paris Lewbel said a Third District police detective has been assigned to the case and the case remains under active investigation. He said he could not comment on the issues raised by Karol and Dotson under a police policy of not disclosing specific details in an ongoing investigation.
Karol said he has been speaking with Detective Wilson, whose first name he does not recall, and said he most recently spoke with her on Tuesday, April 1. “They’re trying to get the license plate of this individual and they’re trying to get the camera footage from the apartment building and the adjacent buildings,” Karol said the detective told him.
Dotson said at the time the police arrived on the scene on the night of March 7, an employee from the 7th Flat apartment building who identified himself as the concierge came out of the building and told one of the police officers that he saw the male suspect and the woman he was with enter the building.
Police spokesperson Lewbel said he could not disclose whether the concierge was able to help police identify the suspect under the policy of not disclosing details of an ongoing investigation.
Police urge members of the public who may have witnessed an incident like this or who may know something about it, including the identity of a suspect, to call the police information line of 202-727-9099.
District of Columbia
Hundreds in D.C. rally for ‘trans dignity and justice’
‘We bow down to your charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent’
Before any visible signs of political protest or activism appeared in “America’s Front Yard,” the sounds of cheers, applause, and the faint melody of Madonna’s Vogue echoed through the air, audible from blocks away. As the Capitol came into view and the crowd neared 3rd Street, small groups of people adorned in bright pink, blue, and white gathered along the pebble-covered pathways and the soft, lush grass of the National Mall. The sun peeked in and out of the clouds as the Transgender Day of Visibility Rally began.
Since its official designation in 2009, March 31 has marked International Trans Day of Visibility. This year, with one of the most anti-trans administrations ever holding power in the White House (and in Congress), the urgency of visibility has never been more keenly felt. For those gathered, holding signs and standing in solidarity, this moment was a call to make trans people seen and heard.
The rally, organized by the Christopher Street Project, a trans advocacy group and PAC, brought together nearly 20 Democratic lawmakers on the National Mall to speak out against the Trump-Vance administration’s efforts to erase the trans community.
Tyler Hack, executive director of the Christopher Street Project and one of the driving forces behind the event, took the stage first. The tall, curly haired redhead was perfectly framed against the dome of the Capitol and the increasingly darkening sky — a fitting backdrop to the growing frustration with the lawmakers inside.
As the crowd settled, Hack took a deep breath and began.
“Thank you to the hundreds of people who showed up,” Hack said. “We have buses on their way, we have people who are coming after work, and we’ll make room for those folks as they keep joining us. And thank you to all of you for showing up to celebrate, to make your voices heard and to fight together for trans dignity and justice.”
Hack founded the Christopher Street Project in January as a direct response to President Donald Trump and the far-right’s growing influence — and their attempts to erase the transgender community. As Hack spoke, it became clear that the fight for trans rights was, at its core, a fight for survival.
“We at Christopher Street Project believe that being a Democrat means more than just your party affiliation,” Hack said. “It’s about unapologetic defense of trans people wherever they’re being attacked, and in the face of this massive threat to all of our rights, in the face of what Trump and his billionaire cronies are unleashing. We demand more from the people we elected to protect us. We deserve more, and we say with all of the power that we have, powers have no place in Congress.”
Hack continued, “Our guiding principle is courage; 56 years ago, that courage was demonstrated by the queer and trans people who led the Stonewall riots. My great uncle, Mark Scheer, was one of them. Beaten up in the Stonewall Riots for standing up for people like himself and standing side by side with his trans siblings. It was his courage and the courage of Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera that ensured we would never be erased.”
The crowd, now slowly filling the grassy lawn, erupted in cheers and clapping as Hack introduced the next speaker. Behind them, members of Congress began to exit their cars, re-reading their speeches for a final time while Christopher Street Project volunteers worked to keep the rally moving.
Rabbi Abby Stein, a trans activist and author, took the stage next. Her passionate speech felt like a sermon and a call to action against the transphobic forces in power.
“It is our moral obligation to make sure that we are visible, so that all the people who came before us and the people coming after us will know that who they are is beautiful, that being trans isn’t just OK,” Rabbi Stein said. “It is something that is worthy to celebrate, and it is something that no one in the world can ever take away from you, regardless of how much military or police or physical abuse they try to use on us. A world without trans people never existed and never will, no matter how much they try. We have defeated fascist titans before and we will defeat them again.”
Several speakers at the rally also highlighted the current administration’s disturbing parallels to fascist leaders of history. Democratic Whip Katherine Clark was one of those who called out transphobia and provided the crowd with insight into the Republicans’ strategy.
“Republicans are trying to divide us and distract us so they can funnel more money and more power to a select few,” said Clark, the House Minority Whip (D-Mass). “We’ve been in these moments before, we know the playbook, whether it’s the ’30s in Berlin or the ’60s in New York or right now in Washington, D.C. They distract and divide and scapegoat so they can tear everybody down. This time they’re using this community, our trans community. They want Americans to believe that our LGBTQ neighbors are to blame for the challenges we face as a country. They hope that if we’re focused on all of us, we won’t notice that the Republicans are closing our public schools that they’re defunding Social Security, slashing our health care, firing veterans, increasing costs of housing and groceries and starting trade wars with our allies. And what is the point? What is the point of this reckless agenda to enrich the billionaire class? And it’s all part of one corrupt plot in MAGA America. The 1% have access to wealth, freedom, power and voting rights, but not for the rest of us.”
Other members of Congress addressed Trump’s escalating attacks on the trans community.
“The reason they’re attacking all of these things is because they know what every authoritarian knows: Organized people, organized workers, marginalized people with autonomy and without fear, that’s a threat to their power,” Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) explained. “That’s why they’re coming for our books, our doctors, our teachers, our workers, and especially our trans youth. But they’re not just a talking point.”
“I want to say what’s happening right now, especially to our trans siblings, is cruel,” Lee continued. “It’s bullshit. It is not normal, and we will stand up against it. But this is not just a policy disagreement, it’s not a debate. It’s by design. It’s targeting. And they are purposely going after some of the most marginalized people in our society.”
Lee went on to address the chilling effects of Trump’s anti-trans executive orders on transgender Americans’ lives, particularly in places like Pittsburgh.
“This is what Trump’s anti-trans agenda looks like,” Lee added. “Even without a national ban, the fear, the pressure and the silence they create is doing the work for them. It’s making health care providers hesitate. It’s making institutions retreat. It’s making families feel isolated or abandoned or unsafe, and I just want to say it here, when you make it harder for children to be seen, to be loved, to be treated with dignity. That’s not just a policy failure. That is a moral failure.”
Rep. Robin Kelly (D-Ill.) bluntly stated that Trump’s policies will lead to the deaths of LGBTQ people both in the U.S. and abroad, citing the severe consequences of his cuts to foreign aid programs like PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.
“His actions and those of Republicans who bend the knee have severe consequences,” Kelly said. “It threw global healthcare programs into chaos, especially PEPFAR. For over 20 years, PEPFAR saved over 26 million lives worldwide, and has been a lifeblood and a lifeline for LGBTQ plus people in the face of stigma and discrimination in many countries, especially in places where being true to yourself comes with immense risk. PEPFAR is the only program that provides HIV prevention, treatment, and care.”
“We are just five years away from ending the HIV/AIDS pandemic,” she added. “Our progress cannot stop.”
The rally ended with an unexpected but powerful appearance by actress, director, and producer Lena Dunham, who spoke about her experiences living with her trans sibling, Cyrus Dunham.
“When I asked my sibling what he might want to hear me say today and what he did not want me to say, which included phrases like ‘boots the house down, mama,’ he made it clear that there would be enough dialogue about what impossible odds are faced right now for the trans community, especially trans youth and trans people of color, and enough conversation about the horrific abuses that the government is attempting to commit and the rights they’re attempting to take away and already in the process of doing,” Dunham shared. “He said, my only job is to express how special, sweet, fab, fun, delightful and divine it is to be embraced by trans people, to live in proximity to trans lives, and to call this community our community.”
“We love you, we see you. We bow down to your charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent, and we are so lucky to love you and to fight with you and for you, to learn from you and to ensure that our rights are inseparable from yours,” the “Girls” star added. “Trans lives don’t just matter. They transform the world into a place of possibility, joy, and discovery.”
As the sun began to set and the rally wound down, Hack reflected on the significance of the event.
“Being resilient in this moment is about continuing to be yourself and continuing to exist, because being a trans person in this moment is, in and of itself, resistance,” they said. “Making sure that folks have the support that they need, being a good ally to those people is resistance and making sure that trans people in your life know that they have your support is critically important, and is the number one way that we can resist these attacks.”
For more information on the Christopher Street Project, visit christopherstreetproject.org.
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D.C. police investigating anti-gay assault in Shaw
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