Brett Murphy

brett.murphy@naplesnews.com; 239-213-6042

A Fort Myers man faces a life sentence after a jury convicted him of shooting and then burning a transgender woman before dumping her body behind a dumpster.

Terry Brady, 47, will appear before a Lee County judge for sentencing Oct. 31 after his conviction Thursday on a second-degree murder charge. A jury found Brady guilty in the June 2014 death of Yaz'min Schancez, 31, after two days of testimony.

Prosecutors used DNA evidence and video surveillance to offer arguments to the jury about how Brady carried out the murder. The case was not designated a hate crime, but investigators noted that two people told them they believed Brady had a sexual relationship with Schancez.

“We’re all kind of relieved it’s over with,” Schancez’s stepmother, Shannon Adams, 41, said in an interview Friday. “It’s been going on for years, so it’s kind of relieving, finally getting it over with and not having to go back and see his face in court anymore.”

Jury finds Brady guilty of transgender woman's murder

Adams said the family will probably attend the Lee County Court sentencing next month. The maximum prison time is life, which is up to Circuit Judge Frank Porter’s discretion.

“I’m expecting the judge to impose a life sentence,” said Brady’s defense lawyer Robert Harris. “I’ve been doing this long enough to know when the judge will give the heavy sentence.”

“I hope it’s life,” said Schancez’s cousin Jasmine Weaver, 26. “So long as he doesn’t come out.”

Weaver said Brady’s conviction is “a long journey coming,” and she hopes her family can now get back to a normal life.

“Hopefully he can sit in there and think about what he did,” she added. “You leave a family with the open scars that we have now.”

Prosecutors didn't offer a clear motive for the homicide. In an interview Friday, Harris said he wasn’t able to convince the jury of any alternate narratives.

“The prosecution did an excellent job,” Harris said. “They really put together a good case. I just felt like it wasn’t enough.”

But the jury thought differently after considering the physical evidence: six bullets and fire. Prosecutors showed that Brady lit the body aflame twice after shooting her to death.

Fort Myers man arrested in killing, burning of transgender woman

Investigators used two different gas station surveillance videos, showing Brady by his vehicle, which linked him to a third video of the same car near where the body was found, behind a Lee County truck rental site.

Police searched Brady’s apartment, near Cypress Lake Drive and Winkler Road in Fort Myers, and found a handgun that matched five of six bullets recovered from the scene and Schancez's body, according to the arrest report. The unmatched bullet was a fragment and couldn’t be conclusively linked. Brady was convicted of possession of a firearm by a felon in June 2016.

“The key witnesses were the forensics,” Harris said, citing the gun, compounded with Brady’s DNA on the grip and magazine, as the prosecution’s legal linchpin.

Harris said he plans to appeal the grounds on which the apartment warrant was served, as well as a failed time extension he thinks would have given the defense an opportunity to locate and flesh out other plausible suspects. “I thought there were alternate scenarios out there that could have been proven,” he said.

Given its brutality, Schancez’s murder sent shockwaves around Florida’s LGBTQ community, which helped raised thousands to cover the cost of her funeral. Four other transgender women were killed around the country that month in 2014, said Kathy Lowry, president of the Gender Equality Trust (GET) Network, based in Fort Myers. “So you don’t forget the one that happened in your back yard.”

Heather Lunsford, a founder at GET, said people like Schancez face “extraordinary levels of physical and sexual violence, whether it’s on the streets at school or at home.”

She said transgender women of color are disproportionate targets of violence, in part because many fall into prostitution in an effort to help pay for hormone therapy and possibly sex reassignment.

But the state prosecutors opted not to pursue the point of Schancez's gender identity, said Harris, nor did they charge Brady with a hate crime.

Still, it was likely Schancez’s gender identity played an implicit role in the trial, noted Brian Edwards, a Florida defense attorney not involved with this case but familiar with it. “It doesn’t have to be charged as a hate crime," he said, "for a jury to try it as a hate crime.”