‘The most depraved crime I ever handled’: Transgender activist gets life in prison for murdering Oakland family

OAKLAND — A well-known transgender activist was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for murdering three family members in a brutal and frenzied attack that the judge said was the worst he’d seen in three decades.

Dana Rivers, 68, of San Jose, was found guilty last year of murdering Oakland resident Charlotte Reed, 56, her wife Patricia Wright, 57, and Wright’s 19-year-old son, Benny Toto Diambu-Wright, in an attack inside the victims’ home. Prosecutors say she used a handgun equipped with a silencer to shoot the victims, stabbed Reed 47 times as the couple slept in their bedroom and then set the garage on fire in an attempt to cover her tracks.

“It is a horrible thing to sentence someone to die in prison, and I don’t take that lightly,” Judge Scott Patton said in a Wednesday court hearing. “But this is the most depraved crime I ever handled in the criminal justice system in 33 years. Frankly, you deserve to spend the rest of your life in prison.”

Rivers, who first claimed self-defense during the guilt phase of her trial, then argued she was legally insane at the time, did not speak during sentencing. Wright’s brother submitted a letter to the court, in which he recounted the stress of going through the crime scene and how Rivers’ turned his sister’s warm and welcoming home into a blood bath.

Richard Wright said his sister was the “rubber band” that held their family together. She was an artist, a “peacemaker,” and “really wanted to be a parent.”

“When Dana Rivers killed my sister, she broke that rubber band,” his letter says. “What held my family together was gone.”

Rivers has been in jail since Nov. 11, 2016, the same day the murders were committed. She was arrested as she left the victims’ home, covered in their blood and headed toward a motorcycle that was parked nearby. The motive, according to prosecutors, was a mix of personal animus and anger at Reed for leaving an all-women biker gang.

Reed and Rivers met at the Menlo Park Veterans Affairs Center in Palo Alto, where they formed a friendship that included Rivers recruiting Reed into the motorcycle club known as the Deviants MC. They became estranged after Reed left the club, but Rivers methodically convinced her to restart their friendship to give herself an opportunity to commit the murders, Deputy District Attorney Abigail Mulvihill argued at trial.

Before her arrest, Rivers was best known as a schoolteacher who became an international news story when she came out as transgender to her students in a high school in Antelope, California. She was subsequently fired for sharing details of her transition, then sued the district and received $150,000 in a settlement. In the aftermath, she became an activist for transgender rights, and ultimately moved to the Bay Area to restart her life as an educator.

Patton denied a motion for a new trial filed by Rivers’ attorney, which argued that prosecutors committed misconduct and that the judge prevented relevant exculpatory evidence from being heard. Patton said the issues raised ranged from “trivial” to “frankly quite ridiculous,” and called the evidence of Rivers’ guilt “overwhelming.”