Newark, Calif.
Police in Northern California this week charged three men with killing a 17-year-old they knew as Lida, after discovering their friend was a boy masquerading as a girl. The revelation came on a drunken early October evening. One of the men confronted Lida, whose real name was Eddie Araujo, and said, “Are you a man?” One of the suspects, Michael Magidson, 22, pulled Araujo into the bathroom to check. The men were stunned to learn the truth. Some of them had just confided they’d had sex with Araujo, partygoer Nicole Brown told the Los Angeles Times, and they quickly turned violent. “They were so angry I couldn’t stop it,” Brown said. Araujo’s body was discovered last week in a shallow grave 150 miles away. He had been beaten and strangled.
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