Rita Hester Miss

Status:

Open

Jurisdiction:

Boston Police Department (MA)

Offense Location:

Allston, Massachusetts

Summary:

Rita Hester, a Black transgender African American woman, was murdered in Allston (Boston), Massachusetts, on November 28, 1998. She was stabbed twenty times while at home by an unknown assailant. Her murder has never been solved. Her death inspired the Transgender Day of Remembrance, founded by Gwendolyn Ann Smith in 1999.

Vital Statistics

Circumstances of Offense:

Rita Hester always spent Thanksgiving with her close-knit family in Hartford, but in 1998, tired of travel after a recent trip, the 34-year-old broke with tradition and celebrated in Allston with her best friend. Rita was last seen at about 5:00pm leaving the Silhouette Lounge on Brighton Avenue. About an hour later, neighbors heard banging sounds in her unit, then a loud yell. At 6:12 PM law enforcement received a call about a fight inside Rita's apartment. It took seven minutes for officers to be dispatched. When they entered her apartment, Rita was still alive. She was on the floor, and had been stabbed multiple times. The offender had stabbed Rita twenty times in the chest. She was somehow still alive but died from cardiac arrest as soon as she arrived at the hospital. The phone had been ripped from the wall. Half a shoe print — not Rita's — marked the bloody floor. The locks on the front and back doors had been left intact, leading neighbors and police to believe her killer had been invited in.

Additional Details:

Hester moved to Boston in her early twenties and became involved in the local rock community. Rita Hester was statuesque and glamorous. Usually clad in her favorite colors, black and purple, perhaps in a slinky tube dress adorned with ruffles, she was a familiar figure both at Allston bars such as the Model Cafe and the Silhoutte Lounge and at Jacque's Cabaret. She frequently traveled to Greece for vacation and kept a cat and a boa constrictor as pets. Local police called Kathleen Hester at her home in Manchester, Connecticut, late on the evening of Nov. 28, 1998, two days before Rita Hester's 35th birthday. Police didn't go in person to tell Kathleen her daughter had been murdered. Kathleen was alone when she got the phone call. Diana rushed over to comfort her sobbing mother. An outpouring of grief and anger led to a candlelight vigil held the following Friday (December 4th) in which about 250 people participated. Hester's family and her best friend, Brenda Wynne, were left to clean and sanitize her apartment, because police do not clean crime scenes and the family could not afford to pay for cleaners. In 2023, the Boston Police Department assigned a new detective, Matthew Fogarty, to the case. Kathleen Hester died at the age of 81 on Oct. 20, 2020 without closure. Kathleen died at the age of 81 without closure.

Case Last Updated:

Jul 20, 2026