‘Enraged’ man kills 17-year-old after learning she is transgender, Washington cops say
Authorities in Washington have arrested a man in the death of a transgender teenage girl, and court records reveal a suspected motive in the killing, according to local media reports.
David Y. Bogdanov, 25, was arrested Tuesday on murder charges after the skull of 17-year-old Nikki Kuhnhausen was discovered in the woods in southern Washington this month, the Vancouver Police Department said in a news release.
“I believe that David became enraged at the realization that he had engaged in sexual contact with a male whom he believed to be female and strangled Nikki to death,” Officer Jason Mills wrote in a probable cause affidavit, according to the Oregonian.
Kuhnhausen’s family had reported her missing June 10 and last contacted her June 5, with friends saying she had left a friend’s home that day to meet up with an unknown man, police said.
Detectives used data from Kuhnhausen’s Snapchat account to find out who she had been talking to early on June 6 — which led them to Bogdanov, who “corroborated that the two had met and that he had transported her in his vehicle,” police said.
Detectives then got a warrant to search Bogdanov’s cellphone call and location data. In October, Bogdanov told authorities in an interview that he had been with Kuhnhausen June 5 but asked her to get out of his vehicle after a conflict, according to police.
“Bogdanov stated Nikki walked away and he never saw her after that,” police said.
According to court documents, “Bogdanov says he picked up Kuhnhausen in his van and drove to his brother’s house in Vancouver. That’s when Bogdanov told detectives that Kuhnhausen told him that she was biologically male,” KPTV reports.
Court documents said Bogdanov reported being “shocked” and “really, really disturbed” by the revelation, saying “homosexuality is unacceptable in Russian culture,” according to the TV station. Bogdanov said the two parted ways and he went to work.
But “police believe that Bogdanov became enraged after learning Kuhnhausen was [transgender] and strangled her,” KPTV reported.
Cellphone location data showed that Bogdanov’s phone had been in a variety of locations at the time — including the area of east Clark County near Larch Mountain where a person found Kuhnhausen’s remains on Dec. 7, according to police.
Phone records showed that Bogdanov “also called an adult video store and several female escort ads that night, indicating that he was looking for a sexual encounter with a woman” — but he didn’t mention those details to detectives, the Oregonian reported.
Lt. Tom Ryan said at a press conference Wednesday that the “biggest break” in the case was the discovery of Kuhnhausen’s remains and noted inconsistencies in Bogdanov’s story, the Columbian reports.
According to the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBT advocacy group, Kuhnhausen is one of at least 24 transgender or gender non-conforming people killed this year.
