Remembering Our Dead

Tasha Dunn

Tasha was a transgender woman who was found beaten to death behind a vacant building. She died of blunt force trauma to the upper body nineteen days after her 42nd birthday.

TAMPA - Police seek the public's help in solving Friday's slaying of a cross-dressing prostitute. The victim, 42, was bludgeoned. [Her] family gave [her] the name [deadname] Dunn, but the male prostitute found dead Friday preferred to be called Tasha. Killed just 19 days after [her] 42nd birthday, Dunn was beaten to [her] last breath, police said.

[Her] body, clad in pants, a jacket and a bra, was discovered shortly after 4:30 a.m. in the parking lot of a vacant business at Nebraska Avenue and Yukon Street. Dunn wasn't wearing any shoes. Three days later, detectives said they have little to go on.

They are seeking the public's help. "A lot of people seem to know him in the area near Busch Boulevard and Nebraska Avenue," Tampa homicide Detective Jerry Clark said. "We're hoping someone will come forward." Jail records show that Dunn, whose last known address was an apartment at 4206 N. 10th St., was arrested 23 times since October 1987. Most charges were prostitution-related, but there also were several drug arrests.

The day before [she] died, Dunn was sentenced to jail after a judge found [her] guilty of trespassing in an unoccupied building and possessing marijuana, court records show. Dunn was released because [she] received credit for time served. Dunn had no family in the Tampa area, detectives said, and officials had not determined a motive Monday. "I don't even want to speculate," Clark said. "The truth is, we don't know." Records show Dunn had been arrested previously at the corner of Nebraska Avenue and Yukon Street.

A beat-up couch and television set had been dumped in the small lot where [her] body was found, but authorities don't believe Dunn was living there. Police first learned of the slaying when a passer-by knocked on a neighbor's door and told them to call 911. The passer-by was gone when authorities arrived.

Dunn, 42, was shoeless and clad in pants and a jacket, [her] upper body beaten and bloody. Dunn had been arrested nearly two dozen times in the past 10 years, often for prostitution or narcotics. [She] was one of a half-dozen [trans sex workers] who work a stretch of Nebraska where [her] body was found, police say.

https://www.tampabay.com/archive/1998/03/02/transvestite-lived-with-danger/

https://www.tampabay.com/archive/1998/02/17/man-s-body-identified/

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10_JeZ7LEIRhvewTCoL5mVkH6MQJzf7fSXl4-P6QJ0v0/edit#gid=0

https://www.newspapers.com/article/tampa-bay-times-murder-of-transgender-wo/72552268/

https://www.newspapers.com/article/tampa-bay-times-ronald-l-dunn-tasha-3/123002308/

https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-tampa-tribune-murder-of-transgender/144647327/

https://www.newspapers.com/article/tampa-bay-times-tasha-dunn-ronald-dunn/122413379/

https://www.newspapers.com/article/tampa-bay-times-murder-of-transgender-wo/144647447/

https://www.newspapers.com/article/tampa-bay-times-murder-of-transgender-wo/144647497/

https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-tampa-tribune-murder-of-tasha-dunn/144647616/

https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-tampa-tribune-obituary-for-ronald-l/144647688/

Report added: 17 Feb 2019. Last updated: 3 Apr 2024

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