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Prosecutors Seek Death Penalty In Gruesome Murder Of Transgender Missouri Teen

Andrew Vrba confessed to torturing and killing 17-year-old Ally Steinfeld in 2017.

A suspect in the grisly murder of a transgender Missouri teen is facing the death penalty.

Andrew Vrba, 18, has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of 17-year-old Ally Steinfeld, whose body was discovered last fall badly burned, with her eyes gouged out, and her genitals stabbed repeatedly.

Vrba confessed to the crime, telling police he first tried to poison Steinfeld. When she didn’t drink the liquid, he stabbed her repeatedly. He claimed Isis Schauer, 18, and Briana Calderas, 24, helped him dispose of the corpse. Schauer, who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and abandonment of a corpse, has been sentenced to 20 years.

Calderas, who was reportedly dating Steinfeld, is awaiting trial for first-degree murder.

Another suspect, 25-year-old James Grigsby, pleaded not guilty to abandonment of a corpse and tampering with physical evidence.

Grigsby told police Schauer and Calderas picked him up after buying items with which to dispose of Steinfeld's body. They then set her corpse on fire, and placed some of the remaining bones in a garbage bag and stowed it in a chicken coop near Calderas' home outside Cabool, Missouri. According to court filings, Texas County prosecutor Parke J. Stevens Jr. intends to prove that the murder was "outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible or inhuman in that it involved torture, or depravity of mind."

Texas County Sheriff's Office

Missouri state law does provide for enhanced penalties for crimes motivated by the sex or sexual orientation of the victim but, despite the gruesomeness of the crime, authorities maintain Steinfeld's murder was not a hate crime.

“I would say murder in the first-degree is all that matters,” says Stevens. “That is a hate crime in itself.”

Unsurprisingly, LGBT advocates disagree.

"The desecration of Steinfield’s body is a direct correlation to the way trans bodies are spoken about—in so-called bathroom bills, in public transitions and in death," the Anti-Violence Project's Audacia Ray told NBC News. "This is especially true for trans women, and trans-feminine individuals, whose vulnerability to violence is amplified by misogyny."

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