National
Man sentenced to life in prison for 1992 murder of gay sailor recommended for parole
Family of Allen Schindler organizes campaign opposing release
A former U.S. Navy sailor sentenced to life in prison for the 1992 anti-gay murder of fellow U.S. Navy sailor Allen Schindler while the two were stationed in Japan received a recommendation for parole at a Feb. 17 hearing, according to Schindler’s sister who attended the hearing.
Members of Schindler’s family, who expressed strong opposition to approving parole for former Navy Airman Apprentice Terry M. Helvey, are calling on the LGBTQ community and others to send email messages and letters opposing parole for Helvey to an official with the U.S. Parole Commission, which is an arm of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Kathy Eickhoff, Schindler’s sister, told the Washington Blade that a parole examiner issued the recommendation that Helvey be approved for parole at the Feb. 17 Zoom hearing after listening to testimony by Helvey and his sister. Eickhoff said she, her mother, and her daughter also gave testimony at the hearing in their role as the victim’s family.
“He was given a recommendation to be paroled on Oct. 26, 2022,” Eickhoff said. “It will now go to a parole board for a final decision,” she said. “That will happen in the next week to three weeks.”
Porcha L. Edwards, the Parole Commission official that Schindler’s family members are urging people to contact to oppose parole for Helvey, couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
Schindler’s murder triggered expressions of outrage by LGBTQ activists when news surfaced that Schindler, 22, had been subjected to harassment and threats of violence on board the Navy’s amphibious assault ship Belleau Wood when rumors surfaced on the ship that Schindler was gay, and the ship’s captain ignored Schindler’s request for protection.
Naval investigators disclosed that Helvey and another one of Schindler’s shipmates, Airman Charles Vins, attacked Schindler on Oct. 27, 1992, in a men’s bathroom at a public park in Sasebo, Japan near where their ship was docked.
A Naval investigative report says a witness to the attack saw Helvey repeatedly stomp on Schindler’s head and body inside the bathroom. An autopsy later found that Schindler’s head and face were crushed beyond recognition, requiring that his body be identified by a known tattoo on his arm.
Another Naval investigator, according to media reports, presented evidence that Helvey admitted to his hostility toward Schindler when Helvey was interrogated at the time of his arrest the day after the murder. “He said he hated Homosexuals. He was disgusted by them,” the investigator said in a report. In describing Helvey’s thoughts on Schindler’s murder, the investigator, Kennon F. Privette, quoted Helvey as saying, “I don’t regret it. I’d do it again…He deserved it.”
Helvey, 21, was later sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to killing Schindler. The guilty plea was part of a plea bargain offer by military prosecutors not to seek the death penalty, which could have been pursued under military law.
Charles Vins, the other sailor implicated in Schindler’s murder, whose lawyer argued that he was an accomplice to the attack who did not actually physically assault Schindler, also pleaded guilty to three lesser charges, including failure to report a serious crime, as part of a separate plea bargain offer by prosecutors. As part of that plea offer, Vins cooperated with prosecutors in the case against Helvey. He was released after serving 78 days of a one-year prison sentence.
After being dishonorably discharged from the Navy, Helvey was transferred to a federal prison and has been an inmate in several federal prisons for the past 29 years. He is currently an inmate at the Federal Correctional Institution in Greenville, Ill.
Eickhoff, Schindler’s sister, said Helvey has been applying for parole and clemency almost every year for at least the past 20 years. She said federal parole authorities have turned down all those requests until last week, when, for the first time, a parole examiner issued the recommendation for parole.
According to Eickhoff, Helvey, who is now 50 years old, has expressed remorse for what he did 29 years ago and claims he is a different person. She said the Feb. 17 parole hearing, in which the parole examiner asked Helvey questions, appeared to focus on whether Helvey would “reoffend” if released from prison.
“He [Helvey] said what he has lined up,” Eickhoff told the Blade. “He’s going to go home. He’s got three different jobs lined up. His mother and his stepfather need him. He wants to be a truck driver,” Eickhoff said. “And then, of course, all of the things he has done while he’s been in prison,” she recounted Helvey saying at the hearing. “All of the mentoring and all of the classes and all the wonderful things he’s done.”
Eickhoff noted that if Helvey is approved for parole and is released on Oct. 26 of this year, it will take place one day short of the 30th year after her brother’s murder. She said the parole examiner also stated at the hearing that 30 years of incarceration in a federal prison can sometimes become a threshold for when a prisoner becomes eligible for parole under federal law.
“And he does have a parole hearing every two years and a clemency hearing every other year,” Eickhoff said. So, it’s more or less every year we are going through this,” she told the Blade. “Twenty-nine years ago, we thought that was it,” she said when Helvey was sentenced to life in prison. “But no, that’s not what happened.”
The U.S. Bureau of Prisons website says all federal and state prisoners are eligible to apply for clemency, which can be granted by a state governor or the U.S. president depending on the circumstances of the case.
Among those joining Schindler family members in urging opposition to parole for Helvey is longtime gay activist Michael Petrelis of San Francisco, who called on the Navy to publicly recognize the Schindler murder as a hate crime shortly after the murder took place in 1992.
In 2015, Petrelis released to the public a 900-page Naval investigative report he obtained from the Navy through a Freedom of Information Act request that revealed new information that the Navy had withheld in earlier years.
Among other things, the investigative report provided further details that the captain of the ship on which Schindler was stationed discussed Schindler’s request for protection from anti-gay harassment in front of other shipmates. Doing so further spread the word that Schindler was gay, a development that subjected him to intensified anti-gay harassment on the ship, according to Petrelis.
Eickhoff and her family are urging members of the LGBTQ community and others supportive of what they say is justice for Allen Schindler to send letters and email messages expressing opposition to parole for Helvey to:
Porcha L. Edwards
Victim Witness Specialist
United States Parole Commission
United States Department of Justice
90 K Street, N.E., Third Floor
Washington, D.C. 20530
Email: Porcha.L.Edwards@usdoj.gov
Office: 202-346-7003
Work Cell: 202-880-2156
State Department
HIV/AIDS activists protest at State Department, demand full PEPFAR funding restoration
Black coffins placed in front of Harry S. Truman Building
Dozens of HIV/AIDS activists on Thursday gathered in front of the State Department and demanded the Trump-Vance administration fully restore President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief funding.
Housing Works CEO Charles King, Health GAP Executive Director Asia Russell, Human Rights Campaign Senior Public Policy Advocate Matthew Rose, and others placed 206 black Styrofoam coffins in front of the State Department before the protest began.
King said more than an estimated 100,000 people with HIV/AIDS will die this year if PEPFAR funding is not fully restored.
“If we continue to not provide the PEPFAR funding to people living in low-income countries who are living with HIV or at risk, we are going to see millions and millions of deaths as well as millions of new infections,” added King.
Then-President George W. Bush in 2003 signed legislation that created PEPFAR.
The Trump-Vance administration in January froze nearly all U.S. foreign aid spending for at least 90 days. Secretary of State Marco Rubio later issued a waiver that allows the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS relief and other “life-saving humanitarian assistance” programs to continue to operate during the freeze.
The Washington Blade has previously reported PEPFAR-funded programs in Kenya and other African countries have been forced to suspend services and even shut down because of a lack of U.S. funding. Two South African organizations — OUT LGBT Well-being and Access Chapter 2 — that received PEPFAR funding through the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in recent weeks closed down HIV-prevention programs and other services to men who have sex with men.
Rubio last month said 83 percent of USAID contracts have been cancelled. He noted the State Department will administer those that remain in place “more effectively.”
“PEPFAR represents the best of us, the dignity of our country, of our people, of our shared humanity,” said Rose.
Russell described Rubio as “ignorant and incompetent” and said “he should be fired.”
“What secretary of state in 90 days could dismantle what the brilliance of AIDS activism created side-by-side with George W. Bush? What kind of fool could do that? I’ll tell you who, the boss who sits in the Harry S. Truman Building, Marco Rubio,” said Russell.
U.S. Military/Pentagon
Pentagon urged to reverse Naval Academy book ban
Hundreds of titles discussing race, gender, and sexuality pulled from library shelves
Lambda Legal and the Legal Defense Fund issued a letter on Tuesday urging U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to reverse course on a policy that led to the removal of 381 books from the Nimitz Library of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.
Pursuant to President Donald Trump’s executive order 14190, “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” the institution screened 900 titles to identify works promoting “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” removing those that concerned or touched upon “topics pertaining to the experiences of people of color, especially Black people, and/or LGBTQ people,” according to a press release from the civil rights organizations.
These included “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou, “Stone Fruit” by Lee Lai, “The Hate U Give” by Angie Thomas, “Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong” by James W. Loewen, “Gender Queer: A Memoir” by Maia Kobabe, and “Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul” by Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.
The groups further noted that “the collection retained other books with messages and themes that privilege certain races and religions over others, including ‘The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan’ by Thomas Dixon, Jr., ‘Mein Kampf’ by Adolf Hitler, and ‘Heart of Darkness’ by Joseph Conrad.
In their letter, Lambda Legal and LDF argued the books must be returned to circulation to preserve the “constitutional rights” of cadets at the institution, warning of the “danger” that comes with “censoring materials based on viewpoints disfavored by the current administration.”
“Such censorship is especially dangerous in an educational setting, where critical inquiry, intellectual diversity, and exposure to a wide array of perspectives are necessary to educate future citizen-leaders,” Lambda Legal Chief Legal Officer Jennifer C. Pizer and LDF Director of Strategic Initiatives Jin Hee Lee said in the press release.
Federal Government
White House sues Maine for refusing to comply with trans athlete ban
Lawsuit follows months-long conflict over school sports in state
The Justice Department is suing the state of Maine for refusing to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order banning transgender athletes from participating in school sports, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced on Wednesday.
DOJ’s lawsuit accuses the state of violating Title IX rules barring sex discrimination, arguing that girls and women are disadvantaged in sports and deprived of opportunities like scholarships when they must compete against natal males, an interpretation of the statute that reverses course from how the law was enforced under the Biden-Harris administration.
“We tried to get Maine to comply” before filing the complaint, Bondi said during a news conference. She added the department is asking the court to “have the titles return to the young women who rightfully won these sports” and may also retroactively pull federal funding to the state for refusing to comply with the ban in the past.
Earlier this year, the attorney general sent letters to Maine, California, and Minnesota warning the blue states that the department “does not tolerate state officials who ignore federal law.”
According to the Maine Principals’ Association, only two trans high school-aged girls are competing statewide this year. Conclusions from research on the athletic performance of trans athletes vis-a-vis their cisgender counterparts have been mixed.
Trump critics and LGBTQ advocates maintain that efforts to enforce the ban can facilitate invasive gender policing to settle questions about an individual athlete’s birth sex, which puts all girls and women at risk. Others believe determinations about eligibility should be made not by the federal government but by school districts, states, and athletics associations.
Bondi’s announcement marked the latest escalation of a months-long feud between Trump and Maine, which began in February when the state’s Democratic governor, Janet Mills, declined to say she would enforce the ban.
Also on Wednesday, U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the findings from her department’s Title IX investigation into Maine schools — which, likewise, concerned their inclusion of trans student-athletes in competitive sports — was referred to DOJ.
Earlier this month, the Justice Department pulled $1.5 million in grants for Maine’s Department of Corrections because a trans woman was placed in a women’s correctional facility in violation of a different anti-trans executive order, while the U.S. Department of Agriculture paused the disbursement of funds supporting education programs in the state over its failure to comply with Title IX rules.
A federal court last week ordered USDA to unfreeze the money in a ruling that prohibits the agency from “terminating, freezing, or otherwise interfering with the state’s access to federal funds based on alleged Title IX violations without following the process required by federal statute.”
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Goodlander endorses Pappas’s Senate bid
Local attorney, LGBTQ rights advocate Dale Sanders dies at 75
Gay couple claims Puerto Vallarta wedding venue discriminated against them
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