had gender dysphoria, an identify disorder that Tracy Jones, who oversees the Beyond Identities Community Center, describes as "your insides don't match with your outsides."

Ce Ce, as she was known, looked in a mirror and saw the reflection of a young man who was born Carl Edward Acoff Jr. on the day before Halloween in 1992.

Looks were deceiving, though.

Ce Ce knew in her heart she was a woman. Her Twitter handle was @thesoicybarbie. Her friend Devinity said she wanted to be Nicki Minaj.

Murder stuck a knife in that dream. Ce Ce's decomposed body was found April 17 in an Olmsted Township retention pond, stabbed and tied to a concrete block. She was 20 years old. It took two weeks to identify her through DNA records.

Ce Ce was reported missing on March 29 by Martha Acoff, her mother, and Nicole Cantie, a cousin, according to Cleveland police records.

Martha Acoff told police she had not seen or heard from Ce Ce since Dec. 22, 2012. She said that Ce Ce would stay out of contact for months and her disappearance "was nothing out of the ordinary," according to the report.

"Reporting person states that her son is transgender/wears female clothing all the time. Reporting person did not approve of his lifestyle and told him about it often."

A check of the city jail, the county jail and the workhouse led nowhere, as did queries to area hospitals and the morgue.

On May 4, Township police working with the FBI Fugitive Task Force arrested Andrey Bridges in connection with Ce Ce's homicide. The 36-year-old West Sider had a rap sheet that covered the waterfront, from trafficking in cocaine to domestic violence.

Andrey Bridges

Bridges, who sports the moniker "Lowlife," hit the big time Friday when he was arraigned in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court on charges of aggravated murder, kidnapping, tampering with evidence and gross abuse of a corpse. He entered a no plea and was assigned a public defender. Bond was set at $5 million.

A memorial service was held for Ce Ce on May 6. A standing room only crowd of transgender, gay and lesbian mourners gathered to pay their respects. There were photographs and words of sympathy. Boxes of Kleenex were handed out.

"We need to protect each other, love each other," shouted Tiffany Isis Soul, a transgender woman who worked the crowd like a Pentacostal minister. "Don't end your life on the street. You don't know what these men have in mind."

She reminisced about jumping out of a car on Interstate 90. "I have scars," she testified.

That's one thing the transgender community shares.

"Can't have a regular job," Devinity told me. "Gotta use your biological name. Uh-uh. We don't want people telling us who we are. Family kicks you out. 'Bad enough my son is gay. Now he putting on a wig?' "

Devinity knew Ce Ce. Met her on the Detroit Avenue " 'ho stroll."

"She told me, 'I just wanna be a woman,' " Devinity said. "Gotta have money to do that. Only way to get it is to jump in and out of cars."

Devinity was on the stroll last night. "I don't enjoy it. I don't take pride in it. I'm just trying to make a living. That part of being a man never goes away."

She figures Ce Ce was on a date that went bad. "Couldn't talk her way out of it. She was a fighter. Just 'cause she's a skinny little thing, you can't just run over Ce Ce."

Tracy Jones of the Beyond Identities Community Center is no stranger to hate crimes. "It's a very bad narrative to share, especially since the first knee-jerk reaction is to judge," she said about the Ce Ce murder.

It does capture the outsider life of transgender women. They're not welcome in the traditional world. And they don't fare much better with lesbians and gays.

"There was this one woman -- I couldn't get her into drug treatment," Tracy recalled. "Why? There was no bathroom she could use. She had breasts so she couldn't use the men's room. And the biological women didn't want her in their bathroom."

Tracy looked angry. She offered the perfect quote for Ce Ce's headstone: "The only place I can exist is under the cover of darkness."

Another transgender woman said it.

Ce Ce lived it.