A Maine teenager who has been in custody for more than a year will be tried as an adult in the bloody slayings of his parents and the family’s dog on Halloween 2016, PEOPLE confirms.
Defense attorney Walter McKee says a conflict between Andrew’s gender identity and his parents may have triggered the early morning killings. (Robert Ellis, the state’s assistant attorney general, declined to comment to PEOPLE on a possible motive.)
“He [Andrew] disclosed to the state forensic service psychologist that his identity was a challenge and that given his parents … he fully expected and knew they would never accept him identifying as female,” McKee says. “Just living with them for his entire life, they had a certain attitude and way that became very clear to him that this would simply not be accepted without question.”
Although 17 years old at the time of the killings, Maine District Court Judge Eric J. Walker in November granted the state’s petition to have Andrew tried as an adult, noting then his concerns about the possibility Andrew could be violent again and would likely need lengthy treatment, beyond what would be required under a juvenile sentence.
The teen intends to plead not guilty to his charges, McKee says.
McKee says that Andrew began to more openly identify as female while in juvenile custody, and court documents show the teen went by “Andrea” while there.
However, McKee says, Andrew is again using male pronouns after being moved to an adult facility out of a concern over how a transgender identity might be received by other inmates. (Transgender people are more likely to be abused while in custody, experts say.)
“The juvenile facility allowed him to identify as female and made accommodations for him to identify as a female. He has decided to set that aside, as challenging as that may be, in recognition that transgender individuals may have greater difficulties in adult correctional facilities,” McKee says. “I say ‘he’ because as of today — if you asked me three months ago, [Andrew] was identifying as female and receiving all the support needed to be transgender, but that is not what he is doing now.”
