The facts
Police in Manaus arrested Aurora Naomi La Fey after an attack on a 61-year-old German stepfather on Sept. 16. Brazilian outlets and The Sun describe La Fey as a trans woman. The Sun and most of the Brazilian reports say 31. One Manaus paper, D24am, said 27. The attack was in an apartment in the Praça 14 de Janeiro neighborhood, around 2 p.m.
Delegate Cícero Túlio of the 1st Integrated Police District told reporters the suspect "devoured the ears, tore out the eyes and raped the victim." Police say fingers were pushed into the eye sockets and the eyeballs were destroyed. Surgeons removed what was left. The ears were bitten off. Investigators have looked at whether parts of them were swallowed. The stepfather lost consciousness during the attack. Police say that is when the sexual assault happened. La Fey has denied the rape. GB News reported that detectives were waiting on forensic results.
When he came to, he ran for the balcony. The apartment is on the third floor. He fell onto the roof of a neighboring building in the Planalto area. Firefighters and paramedics took him to João Lúcio Hospital. He was still in serious condition days later.
Civil Police got a preventive-arrest order and picked La Fey up on Sept. 22 in Planalto, in the west of the city. The charges reported locally are attempted homicide, qualified by cruel means, by leaving the victim unable to defend himself, and by a futile motive, plus rape of a vulnerable person.
La Fey's account, as carried by D24am and GB News, is that the weed was "turbo" and caused hallucinations, and that the stepfather would not accept the new gender identity. That is the suspect's explanation. It is not a finding.
Our take
A tranny. Say it the way the headline is afraid to.
The Sun wrote "trans woman" and then listed a man who, police say, bit a 61-year-old's ears off, drove fingers into the sockets until the eyes were gone, and is accused of raping him once he blacked out. The old man woke up blind and took the balcony. Three floors. A neighbor's roof. That is the escape.
The excuse on offer is a joint and a pronoun. He would not play along, so the ears came off. La Fey denies the rape. The ears and the eyes are the part the delegate described in a sentence, not a metaphor. The papers spent the headline on a feeling. The balcony did not.
