# 58: A Hate Crime Cover Up: The Shocking Story of Shelby Tracy Tom

An episode of [Outlore with Eleanor Neale](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1682504024), 29 Nov 2023, 33 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO4406840412.mp3

Today’s case focuses on the tragic murder of Shelby Tracy Tom. She was a Canadian woman who was strangled to death after 29-year-old Jatin Patel discovered she was transgender. The case sparked a national debate over gender politics and how to better prevent hate crimes. Trigger Warning: Transphobia, Hate crimes, Sexual Assault Resources: Trans Lifeline (USA & Canada support hotline and charity offering grants to trans people) Red Umbrella Fund (International grants and support for sex workers) Mermaids (UK based trans support) GATE (supporting rights for trans, gender diverse & intersex equality internationally) Egale (Canada’s leading LGBT equality support) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

## Transcript

[0:00] One night in 2003, a sex worker went back to a client's hotel
[0:04] room. The whole time, she had no idea
[0:07] there was a dead body hidden in one of the wardrobes.
[0:10] He'd just killed another sex worker before meeting her, and
[0:15] her body would end up abandoned in a shopping cart on the other
[0:19] side of town four days later. Today we're talking about the
[0:22] tragic murder of Shelby Tracy Tom.
[0:29] But before we get into the case, I just want to give my usual
[0:31] disclaimer that I mean absolutely no disrespect to
[0:34] anyone that I talk about in this video.
[0:36] Everything in this video is publicly available information
[0:40] that myself and my research team have found online and just
[0:43] compiled into this video. Today we're going to cover some
[0:46] especially sensitive topics, including transphobia and hate
[0:49] crimes. This case is a hate crime and
[0:52] sexual assault. If any of those things are too
[0:55] intense for you or might trigger you, then I would recommend that
[0:58] you click out of this video now, look after yourself.
[1:00] Hopefully I'll get to see you some other time on a different
[1:03] video. While we make every effort to
[1:05] Fact Check our sources and make sure that all of our information
[1:08] is correct, no action should be taken in reliance upon the
[1:12] information in this video. And I want to take this
[1:14] opportunity to remind you all that these are real people's
[1:17] lives. So please keep everything kind
[1:20] and respectful and sensitive in the comments.
[1:22] All opinions that I will state in this video and mine and mine
[1:26] alone. And just one more thing because
[1:28] I feel like this is very important to say in the
[1:30] beginning. The perpetrator of this crime
[1:32] has since changed their gender identity in recent years or we
[1:36] believe that they have at the time of the case, they
[1:38] identified as a man and used he him pronouns.
[1:42] But recent court documents refer to the killer using she her.
[1:45] So for this video, while I'm describing the perpetrator and
[1:49] the murder them at the time of the murder, I will be using he
[1:53] him pronouns, especially because I think in this case in
[1:56] particular, gender identity and gender Faria really plays into
[2:01] it and maybe plays into the motive.
[2:02] So I think it's important to say that he identified as a man he
[2:07] him at the time and no longer does.
[2:10] So when we get to that point in the case, of course, I'll I will
[2:13] start using she her pronouns, But I think it's important to
[2:16] remember how this person identified at the time of the
[2:20] crime. I just wanted to make you all
[2:21] aware of that before we got stuck into the case because I
[2:24] think, like I say, it could well link into the case.
[2:27] So this one takes place in a very small town in North
[2:31] Vancouver, Canada in 2003. On the morning of May 31st, the
[2:36] employees of a small family run dry cleaning business arrived at
[2:40] work as usual. They were used to a quiet work
[2:43] day. Nothing major ever really
[2:45] happened in their small town, but May 31st would hold a
[2:49] horrifying twist. When staff went into the
[2:52] alleyway behind the dry cleaning shop, they saw an abandoned
[2:55] shopping cart with a big bundle of sheets in it.
[2:59] They were confused, but not immediately alarmed.
[3:02] I mean, they did run a dry cleaning business.
[3:04] Maybe someone had brought by their sheets out of hours and, I
[3:09] don't know, left them there. So staff approached the cart and
[3:12] they went to kind of move the sheets.
[3:14] And that was when they realized it wasn't sheets.
[3:16] It was a big mattress protector that had been wrapped around
[3:20] something like a large object. So they went ahead and undid
[3:24] this mattress Topper anywhere, and that was when they realized
[3:27] the object that it had been wrapping up was covered in
[3:31] plastic bags. Now immediately they knew that
[3:34] this wasn't good. They couldn't see anything
[3:36] specific, but I mean, abandoned in a shopping cart in an
[3:40] alleyway, covered in plastic bags, all wrapped up.
[3:43] It was a human sized object. They knew that they had just
[3:48] discovered a dead body, so they called the police to come down
[3:51] and check it out. They taped off the whole alley,
[3:54] and when they opened all these plastic bags and the mattress
[3:58] Topper and everything, they found the dead body of a
[4:01] transgender woman. Shelby Tracy Tom had been
[4:04] reported missing by her friends four days prior to this.
[4:07] No one had seen her, heard from her, absolutely nothing.
[4:11] And now they were realizing that she'd been dead the whole time.
[4:15] Her body had already decomposed quite a bit, which made
[4:18] performing an autopsy quite hard.
[4:20] But I mean, that told them a lot in itself.
[4:23] They realized that she probably died the day that she went
[4:26] missing, but this interested police.
[4:29] So she died 4 days ago, but her body has only just turned up in
[4:34] this alleyway. So where had her body been for
[4:38] four days? Had the killer held on to it?
[4:40] Was that for some kind of twisted reason?
[4:43] Were they enjoying keeping her corpse or were they just trying
[4:47] to figure out how they were going to dispose of it?
[4:49] Her autopsy also revealed her cause of death to be
[4:52] strangulation. And I mean they already assumed
[4:55] this was a murder considering how her body was found, but now
[4:59] it was confirmed Shelby Tom was murdered.
[5:02] All her friends and family were questioned by the police and
[5:05] they all said they couldn't imagine anyone that would ever
[5:08] want to do this to Shelby. She was such a nice, sweet,
[5:12] genuine person. People didn't hate Shelby.
[5:15] You couldn't hate Shelby, they said.
[5:17] She had no enemies. There was no one that she'd like
[5:20] pissed off in recent weeks. There was nothing that her
[5:24] friends and family could think of.
[5:25] But one thing that stood out to police right away was that
[5:29] Shelby Tom was a rather sought after sex worker in the North
[5:34] Vancouver area. So their immediate theory was
[5:37] that maybe one of her clients could have done this to her.
[5:39] Maybe something went wrong when she went home with someone.
[5:43] Shelby had just completed her history degree at the time of
[5:46] her death, and she planned to go on to be a social worker.
[5:49] She was actually really passionate about that.
[5:52] But for now, her sex work funded her lifestyle very well.
[5:56] I mean, like I say, she was quite sought after in the area.
[5:59] She earned a decent amount. She managed to pay for all of
[6:02] her schooling, her university fees, she had an apartment to
[6:06] herself, she had a dog, she had a nice life.
[6:09] She didn't plan to be doing sex work forever, of course.
[6:12] She had the dream job of becoming a social worker, mainly
[6:15] because she wanted to help other transgender people, specifically
[6:19] transgender children. Shelby felt very lucky that her
[6:22] family had always accepted her, no matter what.
[6:25] They'd always been very supportive of her and her gender
[6:28] identity, but she knew that she was quite a rare case,
[6:32] especially in the early 2000s. There will have been a lot of
[6:35] transphobic, homophobic parents that didn't accept their
[6:38] children and Shelby wanted to be like a mentor for these kids to
[6:43] be the parent that they don't have.
[6:45] Shelby honestly said sounded like such a sweetheart.
[6:48] She was always giving up her her time, her money, her energy for
[6:53] other people. She was very selfless, which is
[6:56] again why her family were just so confused that someone would
[7:00] want to do this to her because she was only ever more than nice
[7:04] to everyone. Shelby was especially passionate
[7:07] about helping people that might be involved in survival sex
[7:10] work. People that feel they have no
[7:12] other choice but to be a sex worker, to be able to make
[7:16] money. To me, their basic needs, maybe
[7:18] they would be homeless otherwise they wouldn't be able to afford
[7:21] food. People that are in sex work out
[7:24] of necessity and they don't want to be in it.
[7:27] Shelby wasn't in that position. Shelby kind of liked what she
[7:31] did, but she knew that a lot of her friends and a lot of the
[7:34] girls that she would come across doing her job were not happy
[7:38] doing what they were doing. They didn't want to be in that
[7:41] life, but they had no other choice.
[7:43] Shelby had been doing her job, I think for quite a while.
[7:47] Couldn't find like an exact time amount, but yes.
[7:51] And like I said, she enjoyed it. It was decent money.
[7:55] She didn't feel like she had to do any of it.
[7:57] She just enjoyed getting the money for a night's work, and
[8:01] fair enough to her. So that brings us to the night
[8:04] that Shelby went missing. It was May 27th, 2003, and for
[8:08] her it was just another night of work.
[8:11] She headed to a club called the Penthouse in downtown Vancouver,
[8:14] which was quite a hot spot for people picking up sex workers.
[8:18] I think it was also a half a strip club, so there'd be a lot
[8:21] of horny men in there, I guess. So she used to go down there
[8:24] quite a bit and whenever she was picking up clients, she had like
[8:28] a stage name. She had her sex worker name.
[8:31] A lot of them did. I feel like that's quite a, a
[8:33] golden rule is never give over your real name because you never
[8:37] really truly know who your client is.
[8:40] So Shelby just went by her middle name, Tracy.
[8:42] She was Tracy whenever she met anyone.
[8:44] For the sake of not confusing everyone, I'm going to just keep
[8:48] calling her Shelby. So that night at the penthouse,
[8:51] Shelby was approached by a man called Jatim Patel and the two
[8:55] of them got talking. They had a couple of drinks
[8:57] together and when she was sure that Jatin was interested in
[9:01] her, she revealed that she was a sex worker and if he wanted her,
[9:06] he was going to have to pay for it.
[9:07] So Jatin actually offered to pay $400 to be able to take her back
[9:12] to his hotel room that night. He was staying a little bit out
[9:15] of town, which Shelby didn't normally do.
[9:17] She didn't really travel that far, but I think he paid her a
[9:21] little bit extra, so she did it. So that night the two of them
[9:25] left the penthouse together and went to the Lionsgate Travelodge
[9:29] and Shelby. Tracy Tom was never seen again,
[9:32] never seen alive again. As I said before, her friends
[9:36] reported her missing when they realized that she didn't come
[9:39] back from that night out. But unfortunately, none of them
[9:42] had seen Shelby's client that night.
[9:44] They didn't see who she left with.
[9:46] None of them spoke to him. So they didn't really have any
[9:48] information that they could give police other than she was
[9:51] probably with a client. Little did everyone know at this
[9:54] point in time, Jatin Patel that had taken Shelby home was a
[9:59] criminal. He was already a criminal, not a
[10:02] violent one, but a criminal nonetheless.
[10:04] He'd spent a lot of time in prison over the years for
[10:07] different things like theft and burglary and forgery.
[10:10] And actually as part of his different prison sentences and
[10:14] stuff, he was actually deported. So he was originally from
[10:17] Canada. His whole family moved to
[10:18] America and then he was committing crimes over there,
[10:21] did prison time over there, and then eventually got deported
[10:24] back to Canada, which is a really interesting element to
[10:27] this case because he was actually deported to Canada that
[10:31] day. Like the day that he met Shelby
[10:34] was his first day back in Canada after being deported for being a
[10:37] criminal over in America. So anyway, Shelby and Jatin get
[10:41] to the Travelodge, they get to the hotel room and everything
[10:44] went as expected. They had sex, all fine.
[10:48] Then Jatin asked Shelby if he could give her oral sex and she
[10:52] said yes. But when he started, this is
[10:56] where their encounter took a very sharp turn.
[10:59] Jatin noticed scarring around Shelby's genitalia.
[11:03] He quickly deduced that this was from gender confirming surgery,
[11:08] and his immediate reaction to finding out that the woman that
[11:12] he is being intimate with is transgender was to fly into a
[11:17] fit of rage. He felt deceived.
[11:20] He was outraged that Shelby hadn't disclosed this to him
[11:25] prior to their sexual encounter. For some reason, this suddenly
[11:29] changed everything for him. And I just want to point out how
[11:33] stupid that is, how crazy that is.
[11:35] He has fancied this woman from when he first saw her in the
[11:39] club. He bought her drinks.
[11:40] He paid 400 pounds, $400 to be able to have sex with her that
[11:45] night. He did.
[11:46] He had sex with her. He got his nut.
[11:49] So why does it matter now at all?
[11:52] Why does it matter anyway? I thought, why does it matter?
[11:55] But do you get what I mean? Like he's already had sex with
[11:59] her. He, he already got literally
[12:01] what he paid for, what he wanted, but now suddenly he's
[12:04] angry because the woman that just gave him everything that he
[12:08] wanted and paid for was transgender.
[12:11] Regardless of how stupid his reasoning was, Jatin Patel
[12:14] became uncontrollably angry. He never gave Shelby a chance to
[12:20] explain anything or talk to him. She didn't get to say her piece.
[12:24] He turned to physical violence. Almost straight away.
[12:27] He launched himself at her. She was still laying on the bed.
[12:31] He gripped her throat and with his bare hands he strangled her
[12:35] to death. Just like that.
[12:37] It happened so quickly, such a senseless murder brought about
[12:41] by vile transphobia and fragile masculinity.
[12:45] He was willing to kill over this.
[12:48] He felt so strongly about this that he was now a murderer with
[12:53] a dead body on it his hands, all because he was put off by the
[12:57] fact that the woman he had already successfully had sex
[12:59] with happened to be transgender. So what was he going to do now?
[13:04] I bet he never expected to become a murderer that evening,
[13:08] but he is, and now he has to figure out what he's going to
[13:11] do. How is he going to deal with the
[13:13] aftermath? What is he going to do with the
[13:15] dead body? Well, the first thing he did was
[13:17] pick up Shelby's lifeless body from the bed, and he just
[13:21] squashed her into one of the hotel room wardrobes.
[13:24] He shoved her in there, closed the door, and then he actually
[13:27] left the hotel. Well, first he put the do not
[13:31] disturb sign on the door so that the cleaners wouldn't come in
[13:34] and find a literal dead body in the wardrobe.
[13:37] But yeah, he went downstairs into the hotel lobby.
[13:40] I think he was about to go back to the club after committing
[13:44] murder, but actually he got sidetracked before he could go
[13:47] out again. He got talking to a woman
[13:49] downstairs and learnt that she too was a sex worker.
[13:53] Her name was Kara Martin. The two of them got talking.
[13:56] She kind of propositioned him thinking that he might be
[13:59] interested, and he said, yeah, OK, let's do it.
[14:02] He handed her $100 and told her to go pick up some cocaine for
[14:05] the two of them. And then she met him again in
[14:08] the lobby of the hotel and then he took her upstairs to the room
[14:13] that he had just murdered Shelby in and they proceeded to have
[14:17] sex right next to her dead body. They are having sex on the bed
[14:22] that he literally committed murder on less than an hour
[14:26] before this. This girl Cara, has no idea that
[14:30] there is a murder victim in the fucking wardrobe.
[14:33] It's absolutely insane to me how horrifying is that?
[14:37] Because actually she did end up finding the body I believe while
[14:41] Jatin was in the bathroom or something.
[14:43] Maybe she she was snooping and she opened that wardrobe door
[14:47] and saw Shelby's body. But Cara was very cool under
[14:52] pressure in this moment. I mean, I think a lot of people
[14:55] would have freaked out, panicked, screamed, ran away
[14:59] something. But that's not always a very
[15:01] smart decision, is it? Because if he was still in a
[15:04] murderous mood, then he could easily kill her too, to get rid
[15:08] of a witness. So she very calmly closed the
[15:11] door again. And I believe she brought a up
[15:14] to him when he got out of the bathroom, and he was very calm.
[15:18] He just explained everything to this woman.
[15:21] He said, yeah, I did, murderer, and then explained the whole
[15:24] situation. He told Cara she was a man, It
[15:27] was an accident. I didn't mean to do it.
[15:30] He was talking about how he doesn't know how he's going to
[15:32] get rid of the body. He was suggesting a few things,
[15:34] saying that he thought about throwing her in the ocean or
[15:38] dismembering her body and scattering the parts or burning
[15:42] her on a giant bonfire, and Cara told him that all of those
[15:45] sounded like awful ideas and he needed to now think about her
[15:50] family in the aftermath of this and think about how they're
[15:53] going to get closure. They need to be able to bury
[15:56] their loved one. That's the least that he can
[15:58] give them after murdering her. When Cara felt like she had
[16:02] successfully talked him down from like, dismembering her body
[16:05] or something crazy, she got the hell out of that hotel room as
[16:09] quick as she could. But she didn't actually report
[16:12] this to the police at all. She said she didn't really want
[16:15] to. I mean, she was a sex worker.
[16:18] She was on a lot of drugs, and she just knew that the police
[16:21] either weren't going to take her seriously or she was going to
[16:24] end up in trouble somehow. So she just didn't say anything
[16:29] to anyone. But before she actually left the
[16:31] hotel room, Jatin had give her some money and some of Shelby's
[16:35] belongings. So I guess to like shut her up.
[16:39] It's quite a tricky 1 to know that she was given money to stay
[16:43] quiet about this murder and she did.
[16:46] But I guess when you hear her reasons why she didn't go to the
[16:48] police, it makes sense. And the case was solved pretty
[16:52] quickly anywhere. I guess it would have been
[16:55] easier to solve if she would have come forward there.
[17:04] For three whole days after committing the murder, Jatin
[17:08] Patel stayed in that hotel room with Shelby's body just stuffed
[17:13] in the wardrobe, and he had that do not Disturb sign on the door.
[17:17] The whole time. He still didn't know what to do.
[17:19] He didn't know what he was going to do with the dead body.
[17:23] But as the days went by, of course, she started to decompose
[17:27] and the room started filling with a horrific odour.
[17:31] He knew he needed to do something now.
[17:33] So on the night of May 30th, Jatin wrapped Shelby's body in a
[17:38] bunch of plastic bags. And then he took the mattress
[17:41] protector off his bed and wrapped her in that as well.
[17:44] And then he waited until night fell to drag her body to a
[17:49] nearby alleyway. The one right by that?
[17:51] Dry cleaners. Now it's unknown where he found
[17:54] that shopping cart. Trust me.
[17:56] Me and my researchers have been trying to find this.
[17:59] I have no idea where he found that shopping cart.
[18:01] Maybe it was already in the alley and so he just put her
[18:04] body in there. I wonder if he found the
[18:07] shopping cart before he took her body out of the hotel.
[18:10] Like imagine if he went up in the lift with an empty shopping
[18:13] cart and then came down with a big bundle in it.
[18:16] But like I said, we have no idea where he found that shopping
[18:18] cart and it's been annoying me for weeks.
[18:20] Anyway, when the body was discovered the following morning
[18:23] and police were called, an investigation began at about
[18:26] 7:00 AM. Right off the bat, police were a
[18:28] bit worried because there was no CCTV footage in that alleyway or
[18:33] in the streets leading up to the alleyway.
[18:35] They had no footage of whoever ditched the body.
[18:39] Luckily, though, when they took the mattress protector out of
[18:42] this shopping cart, they realized it was Travelodge
[18:45] branded. It had the logo on, and there
[18:48] was a Travelodge about 10 minutes away.
[18:50] That sure did narrow down a murder location or a potential
[18:54] murder location. So police got in contact with
[18:56] the hotel, and they were able to give over quite a bit of
[18:59] information because police kind of described Shelby to them and
[19:03] asked if they'd seen her. They said yes.
[19:05] They'd actually seen her walking into the hotel and going up to
[19:08] one of the rooms with a male guest.
[19:11] They figured out which guest it was.
[19:13] It was Jatin Patel who was staying in room 214 at the time,
[19:18] and he was actually still staying there as this
[19:20] investigation was going on. So police rushed straight to
[19:23] that Travelodge and went up to his room to speak with him.
[19:27] At the time, he was just sitting on the bed.
[19:29] And that was when they noticed no mattress protector.
[19:33] There was no mattress protector on his bed.
[19:35] That was the only bed in the whole Travelodge that didn't
[19:37] have one. Of course, police arrested him
[19:39] as soon as they saw that, and they took him down to the police
[19:42] station for questioning. But Jatin wasn't very
[19:45] cooperative. He just denied everything,
[19:47] denied all involvement. He said he had no idea who
[19:50] Shelby was. He said that the lack of a
[19:52] mattress protector on his bed was just a coincidence that the
[19:55] Travelodge must have, like, forgot to put one on his bed.
[19:59] Come on. The interview itself was proving
[20:02] pretty pointless. I mean, he wasn't giving them
[20:04] anything, but detectives had another trick up their sleeve.
[20:07] They threw Jatin into a cell and told him that he was going to
[20:11] stay there until his next police interview.
[20:13] And there was also another man, another criminal being held in
[20:17] the same cell. Only he wasn't a criminal.
[20:20] He was an undercover cop. The whole cell was audio bugged
[20:24] and this undercover cop was going to pretend to be another
[20:26] inmate and try to Cook's details out of Jatin.
[20:31] He didn't really give much away though, Umm, he only said like
[20:36] quite vague things about how like, oh, I'm in so much
[20:39] trouble. He said that he was facing a
[20:41] murder charge, but he didn't think that police had the
[20:44] evidence to actually successfully pin it on him.
[20:47] I mean, you literally know that they spotted your mattress
[20:51] protectorless bed, but you think they don't have the evidence?
[20:54] Jatin also made a point of calling Canadian jail easy
[20:58] because obviously he's served time in a Canadian jail and in
[21:00] American jail before. And he's he said that American
[21:03] jails are fucking hell and he never wanted to go back.
[21:06] That's some of the worst experiences of his life.
[21:09] But he says that Canadian jails are quite a breeze, so I guess
[21:14] he doesn't mind being held in custody.
[21:15] He didn't seem too worried about anything.
[21:18] To be fair. He didn't think police had the
[21:19] evidence. And worse comes to worse, if he
[21:21] is in prison, it's a breeze. So this undercover cop
[21:25] investigation wasn't really, umm, providing anything useful.
[21:29] When police realized it wasn't working, they decided to just
[21:32] pull Jatin in for another formal interview.
[21:35] But actually at this point he'd had a change of heart and he
[21:38] decided to tell them everything. I'm really not sure why he just
[21:42] changed his whole story from I have no idea who she is.
[21:45] I had no involvement to Yeah, let me tell you every single
[21:48] detail of how I killed her. And he really did.
[21:51] He started from the very beginning, literally from the
[21:53] moment he arrived in Canada, from being deported from the
[21:57] States. He told police that within a few
[21:59] hours of arriving in the country, he had booked himself
[22:02] into the Travelodge. He went in there, ditched all
[22:05] his bags, and then he immediately went out on the
[22:07] town. He told investigators that he
[22:09] had met a sex worker at the club called Tracy and he'd
[22:13] proposition and then brought her back to his hotel room that
[22:16] night. They had sex, everything was
[22:18] fine. But then he told the part of the
[22:19] story where he went down on Shelby, noticed the scars and
[22:24] felt very deceived in that moment.
[22:27] He said it just threw him into a fit of rage and he he couldn't
[22:31] control himself. He felt very triggered and he
[22:35] killed her. He said he grabbed her throat
[22:37] with that much force that he literally broke her windpipe,
[22:41] and that is apparently very hard to do with your bare hands.
[22:45] It happens relatively often in strangulation cases where a
[22:48] weapon has been used, like rope or something, but very rarely
[22:52] when the murder method is bare hand strangulation.
[22:57] That means he must have used a hell of a lot of force on her.
[23:00] So when the case went to trial, the prosecution was saying that
[23:03] this was a hate crime. Shelby Tracy Tom was murdered
[23:07] because she was transgender. Of course it was a hate crime.
[23:10] Jatin himself has even told the police that he murdered her
[23:15] because she was transgender. But his defence actually dared
[23:18] to reject this argument that it was a hate crime.
[23:21] They said it couldn't possibly be a hate crime because he
[23:23] didn't know that she was transgender when he like picked
[23:27] her up and took her back to the hotel.
[23:29] So they're trying to say that he couldn't have targeted her
[23:32] specifically sought her out because she was transgender
[23:36] because he didn't know when he first picked her up.
[23:39] Which I mean duh. Like what a stupid argument.
[23:43] Honestly. Like a lot of the time I find
[23:45] myself wondering how these lawyers actually have jobs.
[23:49] Like just because he didn't know that she was transgender at the
[23:51] time that he picked her up doesn't mean that this can't be
[23:54] a hate crime. Because the second he did find
[23:57] out that she was transgender, he murdered her for being
[24:01] transgender. That is a hate crime.
[24:02] If Shelby had been a cisgender woman and those scars hadn't
[24:06] been there, Jatin wouldn't have murdered her that night, plain
[24:10] and simple. But his defence lawyer responded
[24:12] by saying any male can appreciate the significance of
[24:15] what happened to him. If he'd known in advance that
[24:18] Miss Tom was a transgendered individual, he would likely have
[24:21] said thank you, but no thank you.
[24:23] They were trying to use the gay panic defence, which is actually
[24:26] still legal in Canada and it makes me so mad.
[24:30] I hate the gay panic defence. It is so stupid.
[24:33] It's basically a strategy that lawyers use to justify and
[24:37] explain in violent behavior towards LGBT individuals on the
[24:41] grounds that they made an unwanted advance on a straight
[24:45] person. And so this defense says that
[24:47] that straight person can then get really mad and resort to
[24:52] violence. And it's the gay panic defense.
[24:56] You get a defense for that, which is just fucking insane
[24:58] that that's even a thing. Like just just say no thank you.
[25:02] Like you don't need to get violent.
[25:04] And then you certainly cannot have a defense for that just
[25:07] because the person was gay and made an advance on you.
[25:10] It makes me just so mad. It's it's very rarely used these
[25:14] days like a lot of countries don't have that anymore for
[25:17] obvious reasons. So stupid.
[25:20] At the time there weren't any laws that included like gender
[25:23] identity based attacks as hate crimes.
[25:27] So actually at the time of this case happening, Shelby's murder
[25:31] couldn't even be classed as a hate crime because there was no
[25:33] like official law. So it was just far too easy for
[25:36] Jatin's team to be able to use the gay panic defence and
[25:39] essentially blame Shelby Tracy, Tom for her own murder simply
[25:44] for existing as a trans woman. His defense did try to say that
[25:50] the murder could have been triggered by his PTSD.
[25:53] Apparently he had been sexually assaulted during one of his
[25:56] stints in prison. So they were trying to say that
[25:59] the consensual sex that he had with this woman that he paid for
[26:03] as well, paid $400.00 for, was equally as triggering as being
[26:08] raped in prison. All because she was transgender,
[26:11] by the way. All because he found out that
[26:12] she was transgender. Afterwards, the defense said
[26:14] that Shelby's lie had sparked fear, betrayal, shame, rage, and
[26:20] a sense of personal violation, resulting in immense anger
[26:24] towards the source of the deception.
[26:26] The source of the deception being Shelby.
[26:29] I guess. Using his history of mental
[26:31] health issues, his team actually managed to get Jatin's charge
[26:35] dropped from murder to manslaughter, which made me so
[26:40] angry to find out it was literally a hate crime.
[26:42] I I cannot understand how this is being treated.
[26:45] Even if there was no official law at the time whatever, how is
[26:49] this not being treated as anything but a hate crime?
[26:53] The definition of manslaughter is literally a homicide
[26:56] committed without intention to cause death.
[26:59] You can't tell me that Jatin wasn't trying to kill Shelby
[27:03] when he launched at her and squeezed her throat so tight
[27:06] that he broke her windpipe. There was intent to kill there.
[27:10] There is no damn way that that was manslaughter.
[27:13] And the judge accepted this, frustratingly.
[27:16] And in the end, Jatin Patel pled guilty to manslaughter and he
[27:21] was sentenced to nine years in prison.
[27:24] Just nine years for murdering Shelby Tracy.
[27:28] Tom, that is pathetic. But hold on to your hat because
[27:32] it's somehow gets even worse than that.
[27:34] The judge also decided to knock off 2 years from his sentence
[27:38] for the two years that he'd spent in police custody waiting
[27:41] for his trial, which, whatever, it's less than favourable, but
[27:46] you know, I get it. But he didn't just knock off
[27:48] those two years. He gave him double credit for
[27:51] those two years. So he got to knock off double.
[27:54] He knocked off 4 years of his sentence for him for what
[27:58] reason? Why did he need double credit on
[28:00] that? Like I, I don't, I wouldn't even
[28:02] want him to knock off 2 years. But fine.
[28:04] If you, if you're going to do that, what do you mean you're
[28:07] going to double that? This decision, of course,
[28:09] sparked outrage among the public, especially in the LGBT
[28:14] community. People just couldn't understand
[28:17] how this verdict and this sentence saying had been
[28:20] decided. Jatin served his sentence, and
[28:23] then he was released into a halfway house to help him
[28:25] reintegrate back into society. It's basically like a night
[28:29] prison. You have to sleep in the prison
[28:32] or the halfway house. And then during the day, they're
[28:34] allowed to go out and, you know, get a job and socialize and
[28:38] whatever. You just have to be back for a
[28:40] certain time. They have a curfew.
[28:42] Well, one day Mr. Patel didn't make it home for curfew.
[28:46] And so immediately a warrant was issued for his arrest.
[28:49] He was found wandering some streets that were frequented by
[28:53] sex workers. So they believed that he was
[28:55] trying to pick up a sex worker, which is against the terms of
[28:58] his release from prison, of course.
[29:01] So after that point, Jatin was taken out of the halfway house
[29:04] and put back into prison to serve the rest of his sentence.
[29:07] Since he clearly couldn't be trusted.
[29:09] They went on to fully release him later that same year.
[29:13] And he went on to reoffend so many times after this.
[29:17] This man has not been rehabilitated at all and he's
[29:21] committed all kinds of crimes, robberies, burglaries.
[29:24] He did bloody, armed bank robbery at one point.
[29:27] He drugged 213 year old girls with crystal meth and then raped
[29:32] one of them. And he proceeded to keep doing
[29:35] this with this same teenage girl for years and years and years.
[29:39] He would serve prison time for it.
[29:41] He would get out. He would hit up the same girl,
[29:43] drug them with crystal meth and rape her again.
[29:46] Which is just heartbreaking to hear how these girls, girls
[29:49] there were multiple being let down by the system.
[29:52] Time and time again. This man is being put away for
[29:55] what he's done, but he's clearly not learning anything and
[29:58] they're releasing him after a very short period of time only
[30:02] for him to go and commit those same crimes.
[30:04] In 2018, Jatin was finally classified as a dangerous
[30:08] offender, meaning that if slash when he is released again,
[30:12] there'll be a lot more tighter observation and supervision of
[30:17] him, like they're going to keep an eye on him a bit more
[30:19] basically, which is what they should have been doing the whole
[30:21] time. But in 2020, so two years after
[30:25] that decision was made, Jatin actually appealed this ruling,
[30:29] but was unsuccessful, appealed to not be classified as a
[30:32] dangerous offender. But they said, no, you are.
[30:35] And it was at this point actually, that the court
[30:37] documents showed that Jatin is now using she, her pronouns
[30:41] still going by the same name, Jatin Patel.
[30:43] And I think this is very interesting to know because of
[30:46] course, Jatin attacked Shelby for her gender identity for
[30:51] being transgender. So is there a possibility that
[30:53] there could have been some internalized transphobia in
[30:58] Jartin or all the way back in 2003?
[31:01] Or maybe some form of jealousy? Maybe seeing Shelby living her
[31:05] life as her authentic self-made Jatin feel some type of way.
[31:11] Maybe she was experiencing gender dysphoria at the time.
[31:14] Maybe she didn't understand what she was feeling.
[31:16] And then seeing Shelby being a proud trans woman, maybe that
[31:21] triggered Jatin. Like I said in the beginning of
[31:23] the video, the only reason that we know Jatin now goes by she
[31:27] her pronouns is because of the court documents.
[31:29] We wouldn't know anything otherwise.
[31:31] So of course we don't know anything else about the
[31:35] situation. We don't know anything that
[31:37] Jatin has said herself about her identity.
[31:39] We have no idea how she feels now or how she feels about what
[31:44] she did now. I thought that was very
[31:46] interesting. It's a very interesting
[31:48] development to happen 20 years on after committing such a
[31:52] heinous hate crime. Like, I wish we did have some
[31:55] more information on that, but unfortunately, that is all I
[31:58] have for this case. Thank you so much for listening
[32:04] to Usual Disclaimer. At this point, I just want to
[32:06] say that if you've been affected by any of the topics we
[32:09] discussed today, please check the description where we've left
[32:12] some helpful resources. If you want to hear more cases
[32:15] like this one, make sure to follow Usual Disclaimer on your
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[32:21] episodes. And if you really enjoyed, I'd
[32:24] love it if you could leave a rating and a review too.
[32:27] Usual Disclaimer with Eleanor Neil is an Audio Boom Studios
[32:30] production. See you next time.

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