21 Park Vale Avenue, Allston
Around 5 pm on Saturday, November 28, 1998, Rita Hester, 34, left the Silhouette Cocktail Lounge (200 Brighton Avenue) in Allston after playing pool. She headed to her first-floor apartment on Park Vale Avenue, less than a 5-minute walk away. Later that evening Boston police found her on her apartment floor. She had been stabbed at least 20 times. Rita Hester died soon after arriving at the hospital.
It is not known who killed Rita Hester. A little after 6 pm on the night of the murder, a neighbor called the police after hearing a cry for help coming from her apartment. Police found no signs of forced entry and nothing missing from her home.
The killing attracted a lot of attention, one reason being that Rita Hester was well known in Boston’s gay community. A transgender, Black woman, Hester frequented various clubs and bars in the Allston area and elsewhere. Among them was Jacque’s Cabaret in Boston’s Bay Village neighborhood, where she was both a customer and entertainer. The venue hosted a benefit—with bands and drag acts—on December 13, 1998, to help Hester’s family pay for the funeral expenses.
The benefit concert took place nine days after a more somber gathering. On the evening of December 4, 1998, friends and family as well as activists and supporters assembled outside the Model Café (9 North Beacon Street) to remember Rita Hester. From there, they processioned to 21 Park Vale Avenue where they held a vigil. Many years later, one participant recalled Hester’s mother, Kathleen, and her children kneeling outside the apartment building and reciting the Lord’s Prayer. “I would have gladly died for you, Rita,” Kathleen reportedly said, while speaking to the vigil’s participants. “I would have taken the stabs and told you to run. I loved you.”
Born as William Hester in Hartford, Connecticut in 1964, Rita moved to Boston when she was in her 20s. According to The Boston Phoenix, Hester “was six foot two and weighed about 200 pounds, but her friends say she was as agile as a tiny dancer. And she lit up a room with her warm, boisterous greetings.”
A year after Rita Hester’s death, activists held the first Transgender Day of Remembrance to honor Hester as well as other trans people who had lost their lives due to violence. Now observed around the world, the Transgender Day of Remembrance is held annually on November 20.
The apartment building where Rita Hester lived at 21 Park Vale Avenue still stands. Less than a half mile away, on the side of a building at 506 Cambridge Street, across the intersection from where the Model Café is located, is a beautiful mural that celebrates Rita Hester.
Getting there:
Green Line (B Branch) to Harvard Street station. 0.2-mile (4-minute) walk.
To learn more:
Samantha Allen, “The Trans Murder that Started a Movement,” Daily Beast, July 12, 2017.
Sarah McNaught, “Displaced Anger,” The Boston Phoenix, December 11-17, 1998: 21+.
Daniel Vasquez, “Stabbing Victim a Mystery to Many,” The Boston Globe, November 30, 1998: 17+.
Acknowledgment:
Thanks to Molly Brown of the Northeastern University Library Archives and Special Collections for her generous assistance.
