A sadistic killer serving life for the brutal murder of a mother and her two daughters has received a sympathetic profile in Newsweek that has sparked outrage. In the interview, Steven Hayes, who is now calling himself Linda Mai Lee, blamed his “gender identity” woes for the killings, and promoted “gender affirming care” for inmates.
Hayes is currently serving six life sentences and a maximum sentence of 999 years, plus 99 months and 999 days, at Oregon State Penitentiary for the Connecticut home invasion and slaughter of Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her two young daughters. The 2007 killings, which shook the country due to the brutality, has come to be known as the Cheshire murders.
In his interview with Newsweek, Hayes told reporter Joshua Rhett Miller that he was “happy to be alive” since he began claiming to be a transgender woman and started taking female hormones in 2018. Hayes said that he has been provided with makeup, jewelry, and women’s underwear, including bras. The fetish items, Newsweek states, “eliminated [his] thoughts of suicide,” and Hayes is now seeking to undergo a breast augmentation and hair replacement procedure.
“My whole life I hid who I truly was and tried to deny it to myself,” Hayes said. “I had so much hate for who I was pretending to be, I stayed high and always wanted to die.”
Referring to the violent killer with feminine pronouns, Newsweek reported that “her former anger” which led to the slaughter of the Petit family “had been fueled by the question of her gender identity,” and that Hayes was now participating in Equality-8, a club for “LGBTQ” inmates.