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

Published

3 years ago

October 13, 2023

Commander Gregory Peirce was stabbed to death in the first D.C. homicide of 1987. His murder remains unsolved.

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.

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District of Columbia

Judge issues revised order in Capital Pride stalking case

Defendant Darren Pasha agreed to accept less restrictive directive

Published

2 days ago

May 1, 2026

Lou Chibbaro Jr.

Darren Pasha (Washington Blade photo by Lou Chibbaro, Jr.)

A D.C. Superior Court judge on April 30 reinstated an anti-stalking order requested by the Capital Pride Alliance against local gay activist Darren Pasha based on allegations that Pasha engaged in a year-long effort to harass, intimidate, and stalk the organization’s staff, board members, and volunteers.

The reinstated order by Judge Robert D. Okun followed an April 17 court hearing in which he rescinded a similar order he initially approved in February on grounds that more evidence was needed to substantiate the need for the order.

At the time he rescinded the earlier order he scheduled an evidentiary hearing for April 29 at which three Capital Pride staff members testified in support of the anti-stalking order. But Okun discontinued the hearing after Pasha, who was representing himself without an attorney, announced he was willing to accept a revised, less restrictive temporary restraining order.

The judge said Pasha’s decision to accept a restraining order made it no longer necessary to continue the evidentiary hearing. He then asked Capital Pride and Pasha to submit their suggested revisions for the order which they submitted a short time later.

The case began when Capital Pride Alliance, the D.C.-based LGBTQ group that organizes the city’s annual Pride events, filed a civil complaint on Oct. 27, 2025, against Pasha, accusing him of engaging in a year-long effort to harass, intimidate, and stalk Capital Pride staff, board members, and volunteers. It includes a 167-page addendum of “supporting exhibits” that includes multiple statements by unidentified witnesses.

Pasha, who has represented himself without an attorney, has argued in multiple court filings and motions that the stalking allegations are untrue. In his initial court response to the complaint, he said it appears to be a form of retaliation against him for a dispute he has had with Capital Pride and its former board president, Ashley Smith, who has since resigned from the board.

Similar to his earlier anti-stalking order against Pasha, Okun’s reissued order on April 30 states, a “Temporary Anti-Stalking Order is GRANTED, effective immediately and remaining in effect until further order of the Court or final disposition of this matter.”

It adds, “The defendant shall not contact, attempt to contact, harass, threaten, or otherwise communicate with any protected person, directly or indirectly, including through third parties, social media, electronic communication, or any other means.”

Unlike the earlier order, which did not identify the “protected persons” by name, the latest order includes a list of 34 people, 13 of whom are Capital Pride staff members or volunteers, including CEO Ryan Bos and Chief Operating Officer June Crenshaw. The other 21 people listed are identified as Capital Pride board members, including board chair Anna Jinkerson.

Possibly because Pasha addressed this in his suggested version of the order, the judge’s revised order says Pasha is allowed to visit the D.C. LGBTQ+ Community Center, where the Capital Pride office is located, if he gives the community center a 24 hour advance notice that he will be visiting the center, which hosts many events unrelated to Capital Pride. The earlier order required him to stay at least 100 feet away from the Capital Pride office.

The new order also prohibits Pasha from attending 21 named events that Capital Pride Alliance either organizes itself or with partner organizations that were scheduled to take place from April 30 through June 21. The order says he is allowed to attend the two largest events, the June 20 Pride Parade and the June 21 Pride Festival and Concert, in which 500,000 or more people are expected to attend.

It says Pasha is also allowed to attend the June 15 Pride At The Pier event organized by the Washington Blade.

But for those three events the order says he is restricted from entering “ticketed and controlled access areas.”

At the April 29 court hearing, Okun also scheduled a mandatory remote mediation session for July 23, in which efforts would be made to resolve the civil complaint case brought by Capital Pride without going to trial.

District of Columbia

Both sides propose revised orders in Capital Pride stalking case

Defendant Darren Pasha agreed to accept less restrictive directive

Published

3 days ago

April 30, 2026

Lou Chibbaro Jr.

Darren Pasha (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

An evidentiary hearing in D.C. Superior Court on April 29 in which the Capital Pride Alliance presented three of four planned witnesses to testify in support of its civil complaint that D.C. gay activist Darren Pasha engaged in a year-long effort to harass, intimidate, and stalk its staff, board members, and volunteers ended abruptly at the direction of the judge.

Judge Robert D. Okun announced from the bench that the hearing, which was intended provide Capital Pride an opportunity to present evidence in support of its request to reinstate an anti-stalking order against Pasha that the judge temporarily rescinded on April 17, was no longer needed because Pasha stated at the hearing that he is willing to accept a revised, less restrictive temporary restraining order.

Pasha made that statement after two Capital Pride witnesses — June Crenshaw and Vincenzo Volpe — each testified in support of the stalking allegations against Pasha for over an hour under questioning from Capital Pride attorney Nick Harrison and under cross-examination from Pasha, who is representing himself without an attorney.

After Capital Pride’s third witness, Tifany Royster, testified for just a few minutes, and after the judge called a recess for lunch and to attend to an unrelated case, Pasha announced that after obtaining legal advice he determined that he was unsuited to continue cross-examining the witnesses. He said he would be willing to accept a significantly less restrictive temporary restraining order.

Okun then ruled that the evidentiary hearing was no longer needed and directed Capital Pride and Pasha to submit to him their version of a revised stay away order. He said he would use their proposed revisions to help him develop his own order, which he would issue after deliberating over the matter.

He also scheduled a mandatory remote mediation session for July 23, in which efforts would be made to resolve the case without going to trial. He then adjourned the hearing at 3:50 p.m.

The online Superior Court docket for the case stated after the hearing ended that the judge would issue “a new modified Temporary Protective Order,” but it did not say when it would be issued.

Shortly before the April 29 hearing began at 11 a.m., Harrison filed a “Draft Temporary Anti-Stalking Order” that included a list of 34 “Protected Persons” that Harrison said during the hearing were affiliated with Capital Pride Alliance as staff and board members, volunteers, and others associated with the group.

The proposed order stated, “The defendant shall not contact, attempt to contact, harass, threaten, or otherwise communicate with any protected person, directly or indirectly, including through third parties, social media, electronic communications, or any other means.”

The proposal represented a significant change from Capital Pride’s initial civil complaint against Pasha filed in February that Pasha claimed called for him to stay away at least 200 yards from all Capital pride staff, board members, and volunteers without naming them. Okun granted that stay away request in February but reduced the stay away distance to 100 feet.

Capital Pride attorney Harrison disputes Pasha’s interpretation of the order, saying the 100-foot stay-away was for events, not for individual Capital Pride staff, volunteers, or board members. He said the order prohibited Pasha from engaging in any way with the Capital Pride staffers, volunteers or board members.

But the proposed order Capital Pride at first submitted at the April 29 hearing also called for Pasha to stay away from and to not attend as many as 25 Capital Pride events scheduled to take place this year from April 30 through June 21 and for him to say away from the Capital Pride office located at 1827 Wiltberger St., N.W., which is the building in which it shares with the DC LGBTQ Community Center.

At the April 29 hearing, at Pasha’s request, Okun called on Capital Pride to consider allowing Pasha to attend at least the two largest events — the Capital Pride Parade and Festival — which draw over 500,000 participants.

Harrison said in a follow-up message to the judge following the hearing that Capital Pride would allow Pasha to attend those two events and one other as long as he stays away from “ticketed and controlled access areas.”

At an April 17 status hearing Okun rescinded the earlier stay away order at Pasha’s request, among other things, on grounds that it was too vague and didn’t provide Pasha with sufficient specific information on who to stay away from. It was at that hearing that Okun scheduled the April 29 evidentiary hearing, saying it would give Capital Pride a chance to provide sufficient evidence to justify an anti-stalking order and Pasha an opportunity to challenge the evidence.

In his own response to the initial civil complaint filed in February and in subsequent court filings, Pasha has strongly denied he engaged in stalking and has alleged that the complaint was a form of retaliation against him over a dispute he has had with Capital Pride and its former board president, Ashley Smith.

Like its initial complaint filed in February, Capital Pride filed a multipage document at the start of the April 29 hearing with written testimony from staff members and volunteers who allege that Pasha did engage in stalking, harassment, and intimidating behavior toward them and others.

Like Capital Pride, Pasha following the April 29 hearing, filed his own proposed version of the stay away order with significantly less restrictions than the Capital Pride proposal. Among other things, it calls for him to restrict his contact with Capital Pride CEO Ryan Bos and Crenshaw but says it “does not by its terms restrict the defendant’s communications with any other person, entity, governmental body, or media outlet.”

“Darren Pasha sent multiple messages to us and to the court after the proceedings asking for further modifications — which we are not accepting or responding to,” Harrison told the Blade in response to a request for further comment on Judge’s request for each side to submit proposed revisions of the stay away order.

“We appreciate the court’s time and careful attention to the evidence presented today,” Harrison told the Washington Blade in a written statement after the hearing. “This process was about bringing forward the experiences of individuals who reported a pattern of conduct that caused fear, serious alarm, and emotional distress,” he said.

“Capital Pride Alliance remains committed to ensuring that our events and community spaces are safe, welcoming, and free from harassment and we will continue to take appropriate steps to support and protect our community,” his statement says.

“I am happy with what we have accomplished so far,” Pasha told the Blade after the hearing. “I’m just waiting to see what will happen next. But I want to reiterate this goes back to when someone treats you wrong you speak up,” he said. “Even if I lose this case, I am glad that I spoke up and raised concerns.”

He added, “I will just be confident that in the next couple of months the truth will come out. But for now, I am happy with the progress that we have made regarding this.”

This story will be updated when the judge issues his revised stay away order.

District of Columbia

U.S. Attorney’s Office fails to reinstate hate crime charge in anti-gay assault

Published

4 days ago

April 29, 2026

Lou Chibbaro Jr.

(Photo by chalabala/Bigstock)

The Office of the U.S. Attorney for D.C., which prosecutes criminal cases in the District, has decided not to reinstate a hate crime designation filed by D.C. police against a man arrested in February for allegedly assaulting a gay man while using “homophobic slurs.”

After prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office initially dropped the hate crime designation filed by police shortly after the alleged attacker was arrested on Feb. 7, a spokesperson for the office told the Washington Blade the case was still under investigation, and additional charges could be filed.

“We continue to investigate this matter and make no mistake: should the evidence call for further charges, we will not hesitate to charge them,” a statement released by the office in February said.

But D.C. Superior Court records show the case against defendant Dean Edmundson, 26, of Germantown, Md., who is now charged with Simple Assault without a hate crime designation, is scheduled to go to trial on Aug. 18.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office this week did not immediately respond to a message from the Blade asking why it chose not to reinstate the hate crime designation.

An affidavit in support of the arrest filed in court by D.C. police appears to support the charge of a hate crime designation. It says the incident occurred around 7:45 p.m. on Feb. 7 at the intersection of 14^th and Q Streets, N.W., which is near two D.C. gay bars.

“The victim stated that they refused to High-Five Defendant Edmundson, which, upon that happening, Defendant Edmundson started walking behind both the victim and witness, calling the victim bald, ugly, and gay,” the arrest affidavit states.

“The victim stated that upon being called that, Defendant Edmundson pushed the victim with both hands, shoving them, causing the victim to feel the force of the push,” the affidavit says, adding, “The victim stated that they felt offended and that they were also gay.”

Under D.C.’s Bias Related Crimes Act of 1989, penalties for crimes motivated by prejudice and hate against individuals based on race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity disability, and homelessness can be enhanced by a judge upon conviction by one and a half times greater than the penalty of the underlying crime.