As a teenager in Bushwick, Brooklyn, Amanda Gonzalez-Andujar loved Halloween.
She always had the best costumes: a Raggedy Ann doll one year, a nurse another. Halloween was a day when Ms. Gonzalez-Andujar, who was transgender, could dress up however she wanted without being judged or looked at differently, her best friend said.
Ms. Gonzalez-Andujar and her best friend, Madison Gabrielle Chandler, met in middle school in the 1990s, became fast friends and stayed close into adulthood. They were “two peas in a pod” as they transitioned together and navigated the challenges and joys of life as transgender women in New York.
“She would just brighten up the room totally,” Ms. Chandler, 45, said. “If you were feeling sad that day, Amanda would crack a joke and you would just be completely transported to a different place.”
One night in March 2010, Ms. Chandler said, the friends got together for a girls night and had an “amazing” time. Then Ms. Gonzalez-Andujar stopped returning her calls.
A few days later, Ms. Chandler and three others went to her best friend’s apartment in Glendale, Queens, and found her body, facedown on her bed and covered in chemical burns.
On Thursday, more than 14 years later, a Manhattan man was found guilty of her murder.
The man, Rasheen Everett, had first been convicted of murdering Ms. Gonzalez-Andujar, 29, in 2013, but the conviction was overturned on appeal eight years later because of a mistake by the judge overseeing the case.
This time, a jury in Queens found Mr. Everett, 43, guilty on Thursday of second-degree murder, burglary and tampering with evidence.
For Ms. Chandler, Ms. Gonzalez-Andujar’s death marked the start of the most difficult years of her life as she grieved the loss of her best friend and served as a witness in both murder trials.
“She was the best friend I’ve ever had in my whole life, my whole life,” Ms. Chandler said, choking back tears. “I miss her every day, so it’s just been really hard having to speak to who she was, and her not being here herself.”
In a statement, the Queens district attorney, Melinda Katz, said that prosecutors had been determined to pursue the case regardless of the years that had passed since Ms. Gonzalez-Andujar’s killing.
“Upon a reversal of a conviction through no fault of the prosecutors, my office built a strong case against this individual once again, and we successfully proved that he callously murdered a young woman 14 years ago,” Ms. Katz said.
Prosecutors said Mr. Everett strangled Ms. Gonzalez-Andujar in her apartment in Queens, doused her body in bleach in an attempt to destroy evidence of his crime, and stole a camera, a laptop, a coat, a cellphone and keys from her apartment before fleeing to Las Vegas. He was arrested there days later, according to prosecutors, who said that his DNA was found under Ms. Gonzalez-Andujar’s fingernails.
Ms. Chandler said she felt as though Mr. Everett’s lawyer during the first trial, John Scarpa Jr., was trying to dehumanize her friend. During the sentencing hearing, Mr. Scarpa suggested that Ms. Gonzalez-Andujar, who had been a sex worker, was less deserving of justice than someone who, he said, had been at “the higher end of the community,” according to Gothamist.
The judge, Richard L. Buchter of State Supreme Court in Queens, disagreed, and responded that every human life was “sacred.” Mr. Everett was sentenced to a minimum of 29 years in prison.
Members of Ms. Gonzalez-Andujar’s family who were in the courtroom erupted in cheers of “Thank God! God is good!” when the verdict was announced, The New York Post reported at the time.
But Mr. Everett had served just a few years of the sentence when his conviction was overturned, after an appeals court found that Justice Buchter had failed to answer a letter from the jury. In the letter, jurors had asked to review security footage from Ms. Gonzalez-Andujar’s building. Justice Buchter, who left the court in 2020, neither showed that letter to defense lawyers or prosecutors, nor did he record it, according to the appeals court.
For Ms. Chandler, news that the conviction had been overturned was devastating.
“I was like, ‘Oh hell no, hell no, no, no, no, no.’” she said. “It was the worst news ever.”
Before the retrial, Ms. Chandler said she again worked with prosecutors to prepare a testimony that would show the jury who Ms. Gonzalez-Andujar was: a beautiful, vivacious and kind woman who deeply loved her mother.
Taking the stand for the second time, Ms. Chandler said, was one of the hardest things she had ever done.
“It felt like the weight of the world on my shoulders, because I never felt like I did enough, like I could say enough about her, like I could make the jury feel enough for her,” Ms. Chandler said.
Mr. Everett’s second trial lasted two weeks. After the jury’s guilty verdict was read, Ms. Chandler said she visited her friend’s grave with Ms. Gonzalez-Andujar’s family, with whom Ms. Chandler is still close.
Stephen J. Riebling, a lawyer who represented Mr. Everett during the retrial, said he believed that his client intended to appeal his conviction.
“Mr. Everett maintains his innocence and will continue to pursue all options to that end,” Mr. Riebling said.
Judge Michael Yavinsky, who presided over the retrial, will oversee a sentencing hearing on Nov. 11. Prosecutors could ask for a sentence of 25 years to life in prison, with credit for the time Mr. Everett has already served.
For members of the transgender community who have been following the case, Thursday’s verdict came as a relief. Mariah Lopez, a transgender rights activist and the executive director of the advocacy group STARR, said the verdict meant that Ms. Gonzalez-Andujar would get justice, at last.
“I guess she’s resting,” Ms. Lopez said. “I’m glad her family gets this.”
The Human Rights Campaign has documented the killings of at least 27 transgender and gender-expansive people in the United States so far in 2024, and the organization has said that young women of color tend to be disproportionately affected.
For her part, Ms. Chandler said she wanted the guilty verdict to feel good, but it didn’t. The best friend she had ever had, she said, is still dead.
“We got justice, but it’s not enough,” Ms. Chandler said. “It’s not nearly enough. She deserved to be here to continue to live and laugh and be joyful and jovial and fun, just herself.”
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