Defense: Slain transgender sex worker tricked, then blackmailed Bliss soldier
Opening arguments started Tuesday in the trial of a former Ft. Bliss soldier accused of stabbing a transgender prostitute 24 times in 2016.
Cell phone tower records and surveillance footage led detectives to Spec. Anthony Michael Bowden, who was charged with murder in the killing of 36-year-old Erykah Tijerina.
Defense attorney William Ahee said that Tijerina was blackmailing Bowden, who has Aspergers Syndrome thus making it difficult for him to understand social cues.
According to Ahee, 36-year-old Tijerina posted ads on Craiglist advertising sex using photos that were not her.
During a sexual encounter Ahee said Bowden discovered Tijerina was male, and that she knowingly exposed Bowden to HIV, as she had tested positive since she was 17.
Tijerina demanded $200 from Bowden, and threatened to use put his photo on Craigslist advertising sex with men, and tell the Army he paid her for sex and was arranging her sexual encounters, according to Ahee’s opening arguments.
The autopsy report states Tijerina was slashed approximately 20 times around the shoulders, neck and hands; more than 10 times in the back; and once in the left cheek below the earlobe.
The El Paso County Medical Examiner’s Officer ruled her death a homicide.
In footage of Bowden’s second police interview, he admitted to slashing Tijerina. “I grabbed the chisel and stabbed her to death – mainly in the back until he stopped breathing,” said Bowden, who then told detectives he destroyed the clothes he was wearing and and Erykah’s phone. “I took the phone because I thought that was the only way you guys would find me,” Bowden said in the footage.
Prosecuting attorney Denise Butterworth asked the jury to remember the legal definition of self defense. She said one has to be in imminent danger in order to use the argument.
Butterworth and Ahee said Bowden stopped to buy a chisle from Ace Hardware before he went to confront Tijerina, and that he was wearing gloves at the time.
On Aug. 8, 2016, Tijerina’s stepfather found her dead inside her apartment around 8:30 p.m. at the Rio Grande Community housing complex, on the 200 block of Lisbon Street in south-central El Paso.
Neighbors reported seeing an African-American man in his early 20s enter Tijerina’s apartment between 6 and 7 p.m. the night of the murder.
Bowden told police he had sex with the victim inside her apartment, but denied having anything to do with her killing, according to the complaint affidavit.
In a sworn statement detailed in the affidavit, Isiah Williams, a friend of Bowden, told detectives that Bowden sent him a text message in which he admitted to killing Tijerina.
ABC-7 has learned Bowden was a Patriot Launching Station crewman assigned to Fort Bliss’ 5th Battalion, 52nd Air Defense Artillery, which is part of the 11th Air Defense Artillery Brigade of the 32nd Army Air and Missile Defense Command.
