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TRANSCRIPT: The Village, S2 E1: Alloura

[Car drives by]

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] It’s a Saturday in August 2017: A heat wave had just come and gone. Two friends had been out, grabbing some pizza and they decided to cap off their afternoon with a hike. [Footsteps walking] The pair head down into Toronto's Rosedale Ravine — past a dog park, into the shaded paths that twist through the greenspace. Just beyond the edges of the ravine sit some of the nicest homes in the city: A mix of modern-looking, recently renovated houses and heritage red brick estates. Rosedale has always been an affluent, green, upper-class neighbourhood. But these days, homes around here usually start at $2 million. [Somber music fades in]. Part of the appeal of the neighbourhood is that the expansive ravine offers a bit of a shelter from the city.

But down below, in the ravine itself, there’s a reminder of the stark class divides in Toronto. It’s not uncommon to see encampments hidden just a little bit off the paths. Many of the city’s homeless have preferred the canopy of trees to the streets of downtown.

The pair of hikers leave the beaten path, and go into a wooded area.They arrive on the top of a small hill. At the bottom, there is a lonely blue tent. And sticking out beside the tent are what, at first glance, appear to be mannequin legs.

But they climb down and get close enough to confirm that ...

The body is very real.

It's a woman. She's lying face down. She's wearing skinny jeans, runners, and a blond wig. There's a broken cell phone and a purse nearby but no ID. She had been there for some time, and she's badly decomposed.

When police arrive, it's impossible to make an identification.

The hikers leave that afternoon, shaken. But it wouldn’t be the end of the story for them.

[Somber music fades out]

[Drum beat fades in]

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] My name is Justin Ling, and for years, I investigated the mysterious disappearances of men from Toronto’s Gay Village. Disappearances that were, ultimately, tied to serial killer Bruce McArthur.

Last season, we went back and looked at those cases — and a slew of unsolved homicides, dating back to the 1970s. Murders that remain unsolved to this day and a system that let their killers get away with it.

But there’s one story you didn’t hear. The story of a woman who disappeared from the queer community, but who was not connected to those missing men.

A disappearance that has never been fully explained.

While the community demanded answers, the city, the media, and the police have never given this case the attention it deserves.

It’s time it does.

And it’s time we talk about the systems that failed her, and failed the whole queer community, too.

I'm Justin Ling and this is The Village: Season Two.

[Drum beat ends]

She was obsessed with, pinup like old 60s pinup girls. And loved their style and everything about them, the big lashes and the fake freckles and the waves in the hair. She was beautiful … smile that would just steal your life. [laughter] She would smile at people and they just forget everything, forget their name and where they came from and where they live.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Ally Jackson has been thinking a lot, recently, about her friend: Alloura Wells.

ALLY JACKSON: [over the phone, continued] so like I ran away from home, she ran away from home and we wound up together, like we just randomly ran into each other, took a liking to each other and became friends. There was a coffee shop at Wellesley and Parliament, it was called the Baker's Dozen. I don't think it's there anymore and it would attract a lot of homeless people, a lot of street kids, a lot of everything. I mean, it was 24 hours. And if you needed somewhere safe to sleep with light where there's people around, she could go and knock out in there for a few hours, have a coffee, sit down, eat something. I later found out that actually, like while we were all homeless street kids, she actually had a home. You know, she had a home and she didn't want to go home. Like she would say that, you know, she would face certain abuse there, that, you know, they didn't really accept her for who she was and ...

[Ally fades out]

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Alloura and Ally, both for their own reasons, left home when they were really young. They ran the streets, in the east end of Toronto’s downtown. Just a few blocks away from The Village. Alloura’s family didn’t have a lot of money. They moved from place to place — for a while they stayed in a hotel. But, more importantly, she didn’t feel comfortable at home.

[Piano music fades out]

LAYLA: We were both baby trans girls, [Bass and drum beat fades in] like, you know, she was living as, it was her first six months living day to day as a girl and same as mine.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] On the streets, Alloura met Layla — who was going through exactly the same thing she was. Layla was just a couple years older.

LAYLA: It was easier just to be away from home and like in the streets. It was kind of, scary to come out a second time about being trans, so like, you know. We felt more comfortable dressing up in a McDonald's washroom than like you know, at home because we didn't know how our parents would react. We had the same childhood where, you know, we were bullied in school. People couldn't tell our gender. We played with dolls, we were scolded for it for a bit and then our parents got over it. And, you know, we grew up like that.

[Layla fades to the background]

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Alloura knew from a very young age that she was transgender. Her mom seemed to accept it readily. Her father? Well, he didn’t.

LAYLA: He wasn't supportive of it at all, actually. He would take us aside and like, tell us that he didn't want us to be dressing a certain way around the other kids or that like that we would be run down, gunned down, That we're only asking for for a difficult life. Her mother would refer to her as 'her', 'she' and then her father would say 'his' and 'him.'

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] This was the early 2000s. To be openly gay in high school was rare and it would mean, almost without exception, being subject to pretty intense bullying. To come out as trans was on another level. It was incredibly brave but it also wouldn’t be easy. Not by a long shot.

[Bass and drum beat ends]

LAYLA: Public schools weren't doing it for us because we were more than just homosexual or whatever...

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Luckily for Alloura and Layla, Toronto had an alternative to those public schools.

LAYLA: We ended up into a school that was LGBT only and it was called the Purple Triangle. And both of us went through the same program.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] The Triangle Program was a pretty extraordinary opportunity — it’s a high school that was designed to support queer youth. It's the only dedicated LGBTQ high school in Canada.

Even if Alloura’s dad wasn’t comfortable with her gender identity, a psychologist told her parents: This wasn’t just some phase.

[Music Fades in]

LAYLA: Our parents were basically told that as we grow older most likely we would probably lean towards identifying as the opposite gender we are born.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Alloura had a tough time though.

It’s not surprising. A difficult home life. Living, at least part time, on the streets. It’s not exactly conducive to doing well in high school — even if it’s a particularly supportive one. Amidst all of this, Alloura was a teenager. She was still figuring out who she was.

ALLY JACKSON: [over the phone] Honestly, she had so many names I can't remember, but Alloura seemed to stick. When she grew up and kind of blossomed into her true self, it was it was Alloura.

LAYLA: Honestly, she was drop dead gorgeous and anybody will tell you that. She had a naturally feminine body. She was tall. She had a stunning face. She had a walk like you knew it was her silhouette way down the street, and she was basically like. She showed up to that corner and everybody else would just call it a night. She just had no fear kind of with it. She just jumped right in. Me, I would kind of profile or evaluate or look around the car or see if I see anything like in the passenger seat or, you know, try to get a few words, get them to talk a bit just so I could kind of get a feel for them. And then, you know, they're picking up a sex worker off the street. They don't want to be stopped for too long. So, a lot of them would just be like, oh, to hell with you. Life totally changed, stepping out on to that corner from what I was going through? In society? To that, it was crazy.

[Music fades out]

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Layla was around 18 years old. But Alloura was two years younger.

JUSTIN LING: [Interview clip] That's pretty young.

LAYLA: Yeah. And then we just started to like do kind of like a buddy system out there.

JUSTIN LING: Why did you feel the need to have a sort of buddy?

LAYLA: Well, you know, it's downtown Toronto after midnight and you're jumping into strangers’ cars. Her and I were pretty new together at the same time, and very picked on. Like a lot of girls didn't want us to be out there. Especially her, because she had these legs to die for, so, you know, it would be, you know, it would be cutting their grass. If they seen us around, they'd run us off the block and stuff like that, beat us up, rob us…

LAYLA: You know, I had a mother who cared. And so did she. we weren't kicked out. We weren't abandoned. You know, we were problematic, troubled girls. So, you know, it wasn't like our parents weren't looking for us. There was many times when both our parents, her dad, my mom came right on to that block. Pulled up right onto the sidewalk…

[Layla fades out]

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] To some degree, this was economic necessity. Alloura and Layla couldn’t just walk into the Gap and get a job. Handing over your driver’s license or filling out an employment information sheet meant outing yourself. But Alloura and Layla: They wanted to be there. This was freedom.

[Layla comes in]

LAYLA: Our parents didn't understand that like that's where we were Queen you know, and the normal society didn't feel that way. We’d get weird looks all day long and people addressing our gender identity go the wrong way. People like laughing, people pointing, people in, people being in shock. And then you go out there and you have cars almost driving over curbs like looking trying to look back at you and like, you know, it felt good so. Also, being trans like you go from, you know, being a minority and awkward to like a goddess and a princess and pretty much, you know, pop star.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Alloura and Layla, they were known on the street as the Bratz Dolls. If you don’t remember them, they were the fashionista kids’ toys. The dolls had glossy full lips, and glam make-up. They wore tutus, jean shorts and thigh-high boots. Plenty of young girls wanted to look just like them.

LAYLA: We had like, a little tiny fan club going on. That was like underground and it was edgy. It was dangerous. It was glamorous. She was mostly into, like, at that time what every girl that was living in the projects was into, you know, girl rappers, Lil’ Kim. How Many Licks.

[Lil’ Kim’s ‘How Many Licks’ fades in]

LAYLA: no shame to your game kind of thing, like get your money, honey. She was all about that.

[Lil Kim’s ‘How Many Licks’ fades out]

[lofi music fades in]

LAYLA: She was so shy and then as soon as the sun went down, the lashes went on. People like, when I say stunning people, literally, like would go like [gasp] and just be in awe of her.

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] That's obviously how she felt more comfortable.

LAYLA: Yeah.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] What’s so frustrating is that, of all the normal choices that teens their age face — do I stay at home, or leave; do I find a job; do I apply for university — Alloura and Layla really felt like the best choice, maybe their only choice, was sex work. Listening to her, I do forget how young they were.

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] Where were you living? I mean where were you kind of getting meals and, you know.

LAYLA: Uhmm. Basically we're like Little Rascals, so we would spend like two or three nights out. And usually just sneak back home either to my place or her place, depending on like our parents work schedules. We knew that we would have to basically take a little break and go home and get grounded and not be allowed out of the house and told not to see — hang out with that person anymore and, you know, have our have our wigs and makeup and skirts taken away and then, you know, meet back up again in a week or two and be gone again. Or we would stay with clients, um, or sometimes just sleep in McDonald's bathrooms [shy laughter.]

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Mixed in with the glamour and, well, sleeping in McDonald’s bathrooms — there were risks inherent in this job. Alloura and Layla, they knew that sex workers were often targeted.

LAYLA: Girls go missing, girls end up dead, girls end up addicted. Girls end up trafficked, kidnaped, sick. We knew about it all. We were aware, but it was kind of like, you think about it, and there was nowhere else pretty much in the world that we could get that type of attention.

LAYLA: We went to seminars how to keep yourself safe, like, you know, like sometimes like maybe never shut the door all the way when you're driving with a trick in the car. So, if you need to jump out, never fasten your seatbelt, never turn your back to them, never let them get on top of you. Never, never be in a hotel room with things beside the bed, such as lamps or alarm clocks, devices with cords...

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Many sex workers preferred listing ads in the local alt-weekly newspapers. It was safer. You got to screen your clients and set up dates in predetermined locations. But Alloura and Layla didn’t have that luxury.

LAYLA: Where else are we going to go to try sex work under age? [lofi music fades out] No one's going to host that. That'd be like that's child trafficking at that point. Right.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] The advent of the internet, specifically the digital back pages made advertising possible for girls like Alloura and Layla.

LAYLA: Then Craigslist came out. So, we didn't have to be on the street anymore, and it wouldn't be only after 10:00 at night. So, you know, then we started running 24/7. We didn't have to, like, you know, pay out three crackheads a night to be able to work.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] And, listen, I know what you’re thinking: It is not good that websites like Craigslist made it possible for underage sex workers to find clients. But that wasn’t Alloura and Layla’s concern. They were just out to make some money.

LAYLA: We got to like, you know, have professional photo shoots. The rates got higher. We got to work with, you know, people that wouldn't be driving around a sketchy corner like that. And we started to meet people that actually would like, you know, take care of us and fund our life.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] One summer, the pair cobbled together enough money to get their own apartment. But their home quickly turned into a place for other girls to work out of. Layla says the lifestyle was getting "out of control"

LAYLA: We started to let other girls come over. We started to have dates there all the time.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] That apartment was also a grim reminder of the violence that faced their community.

LAYLA: The apartment directly above us was, She's still a, she's still a cold case, her name was Cassandra and she was strangled to death and left in her bathtub.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Cassandra Do: She was also a transgender sex worker. She was killed in her home in 2003.

LAYLA: that was always a scary story for me.

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] Right, and they hadn't caught the guy who did it.

LAYLA: To this day, no, it's still cold case file. Yeah.

LAYLA: I wanted a fresh start and I wanted to go like, I wanted to go somewhere where, you know, I could focus and work on my transition and get it over with so I could move on in life. I just went to Montreal one day and I didn't come back for four years.

<beat>

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Without Layla, Alloura went back to her parents' place. But things weren't great there. And she started learning that the Canadian government didn’t think very highly of sex workers, especially in those years. I get ahold of her court records. Her first criminal charge as an adult was for “communicating for the purposes of engaging in prostitution.” She was 18 years old. And the law kept coming after her. In the next few years, she faced some petty theft charges. And when I say petty, I mean petty. She was arrested in 2011 for stealing a t-shirt. And then again, the same year, for stealing a box of ice cream. So now she’s a trans woman with a rap sheet, even if it’s for some pretty minor crimes. That would make getting a legal job a lot more difficult. Then, something else happens: Her mom gets sick. It’s lung cancer.

MICHELLE WHEELER: Alloura and my mom were very, very close, and she was there for my mom, you know, while she was doing all her treatment and all that.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] This is Alloura's sister. Michelle Wheeler.

MICHELLE WHEELER: He didn't leave. He stayed with her the whole time. It definitely affected him, that's for sure. There's no rock to fall back on, you know?

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] I should note, here, that sometimes Michelle uses “he” to refer to Alloura. Michelle explained to me that sometimes she still uses male pronouns. It’s not malicious and there’s no intent behind it. It’s just a habit. But it’s exclusive to their relationship — so, to you and me, Alloura was and will always only be “she.” With all the troubles at home, Michelle left at 16. Alloura was still a kid. They didn't actually spend a lot of their childhoods together. When Alloura was just 22, her mom died. It was devastating — but it brought her and Michelle closer together.

MICHELLE WHEELER: He was just there for me, the whole like, we became so close and this was after he had told me he was trans. I didn't mind. I didn't care at all. we weren't really even that close before I had kids and after my mom passed away he just became like my rock, like he helped me so much with my kids and they loved him so much, especially my son.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] As we chat, she brings up pictures of Alloura on her phone.

MICHELLE WHEELER: This picture I really like.

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] Oh that's nice,

MICHELLE WHEELER: I just think she looks beautiful.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] She’s got long light brown hair framing her face, with her bangs swooping down over one eye. She’s wearing a leather coat. Glossy lipstick, dark eyeshadow and dramatic eyebrows. One thing I’ve heard from everyone who knows Alloura: She was a whiz with make-up.

MICHELLE WHEELER: She was very confident. She was such a good drawer and like, I don't know, she could really do anything with her face. She could probably be a really good makeup artist if she wanted to be.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] I look at the photo, and then I look at Michelle, who is sitting across from me, down a long dining room table. It’s striking just how much they look alike.

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] I was realizing the photos I've seen of her later. You have, like, a real family resemblance. I find that interesting . I think that she kind of picked makeup that ended up kind of resembling you, frankly.

MICHELLE WHEELER: I think she did look up to me. I definitely know that. Even though I wasn't always that confident, I tried to be the best sister that I could. But there's definitely some regrets, that's for sure, and yeah, things that could have been, could have went differently. Life's funny. [has sorrow, loss in her voice here.]

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] After her mom died, Alloura got her own place: Nothing fancy. A rooming house in Scarborough - on the eastern edge of the city - not far from where Michelle was living with her kids.

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] It kinda sounds like even just having that room, even with a rooming house, was kind of more stable then.

MICHELLE WHEELER: Yeah, it really 100 percent was.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Alloura would often lend a hand to Michelle around the house. I see a Facebook post from Michelle thanking Alloura for watching the kids, so she can have a night out. There are pictures of the family on a trip to Niagara Falls.

But it’s telling to me that Alloura didn’t feel entirely comfortable being herself outside of her community...outside of downtown.

MICHELLE WHEELER: When we were in Scarborough, she would only dress like a boy. When downtown, she would dress as a girl. [trim this pause] I mean, she had been in Scarborough a few times dressed as a girl, but…

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] Only when she had to be? Is that fair?

MICHELLE WHEELER: Basically when she was doing her thing.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Over those years, Alloura went back to school. One day, out of the blue, she messaged Ally about it.

ALLY JACKSON: [over the phone] She says, ‘guess what?’ And ‘I know, this is late, but I'm trying to get my GED, bitch.’ [laughter]

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Around that time, she wrote on Facebook "Got accepted into the security guard training course … can't wait to start making that green!!!"

MICHELLE WHEELER: She did have a security guard course, she did. And she was so proud of herself for doing that. And I was so proud of her for doing that. But it never really went anywhere.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Alloura clearly had this drive to look after herself. To make herself financially independent. But there were things working against her.

MICHELLE WHEELER: My dad could not hold a job. I don't feel like she was like that, but mentally, maybe she felt like... she didn't have motivation because she never got motivation from other -- her you know, her family. Also I think that she just wished she had it a little bit easier.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Eventually, Alloura was back to living on the streets. When she had nowhere else to go, she would make it back to Michelle’s.

MICHELLE WHEELER: So I was going out, I was leaving my house and we had like a patio, so and I just looked over there and Alloura was laying there sleeping. So I'm like, what are you doing? And I guess she had a pretty rough night. She, like, walked all the way from downtown to me in Scarborough.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] That is about a three-and-a-half hour walk.

MICHELLE WHEELER: And so I just I let her in and she slept for the whole entire day. I fed her, she took a shower.

[sad music fades in]

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] She didn’t know it then, but it would be the last time Michelle would see her sister.

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] How was she looking when you last saw her. You said she was in rough — I mean I'd be in rough shape too if I'd walked-

MICHELLE WHEELER: I mean, she was looking pretty rough. Then she took a shower and she fixed herself up a little bit and... ugh, that must be hard. She told me that she had a bad incident with some John or something and she had to run away. She told me a lot of stories about what happened while she was living on the streets. Sad stories. She told me she was sleeping one time in like an abandoned house, and she woke up and some guy was trying to set her on fire.

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] What?!

MICHELLE WHEELER: She's been through some stuff.

MICHELLE WHEELER: And then I was going through issues with my family, um, and I ended up leaving for a little while. because I wasn't there, he stopped paying his rent and then he just went back doing what he used to do.

So I always blame myself for like, [whispering/trying not to cry] it probably wouldn't have happened if I just friggin... stayed.

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] I don't think you should blame yourself because I don't think that's....

MICHELLE WHEELER: I kind of do like .. but… yeah.

[sad music fades out]

<beat>

MONICA FORRESTER: Sex workers are a community and we're a very vibrant community.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] This is Monica Forrester.

Monica knows everybody. For decades, she’s organized for Maggie’s Sex Workers Action Project. Maggie’s is one of Canada’s most organized and influential sex work organizations. For almost four decades, they’ve been defending sex workers in court, advocating for laws to protect workers, and to decrimialize the sex trade. They also run a drop-in centre not far from the Village. It’s a place where sex workers could turn for a cup of coffee, some food, support, resources, maybe just a sofa to crash on. That’s where Monica met Alloura.

MONICA FORRESTER: I met her when she was 17 sneaking in the bar. She was beautiful. She looked like -- what's her name from The Nanny? You remember that show The Nanny?

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] Fran Drescher?

MONICA FORRESTER: Yeah.

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] Oh. [Laughs]

MONICA FORRESTER: She looked identical to her and she had her personality. she was a singer, she was so young and had so much ambition and such a future ahead of her. She did actually do some shows in the clubs. She did drag shows and stuff. But she was also an entertainer in the community. She liked to put on a show for us so it was great. Oh, yeah. She'd do "Shine Like A Diamond" with a— [Laughs]

[Rihanna’s “Diamonds” starts]

MONICA FORRESTER: [continued] — cuz that had this big round circle stage she'd be on the stage at the 519 (laughs).

MONICA FORRESTER: She liked to make people laugh. She really wanted to shine and make sure people knew that she was artistic and just fun and outgoing. She was just amazing. Amazing being.

[Rihanna’s “Diamonds’ ends]

[Chill hop music starts]

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Monica was two decades older than Alloura. But she went through a really, really similar thing.

MONICA FORRESTER: You know what, I was actually doing activism before I even knew what activism was. Coming from a community that's so marginalized, when I came out in '89 I thought I was just a queer boy at the time. 'cause I've always dressed up growing up as a kid. My parents were very liberal. (They) allowed me to express gender and whatever that looked like. So then when I met trans people, like, Oh my god, I can transition and be who, you know, be Monica. I met a girl in school, but I was in junior school. Her name was Monica, and I'd say if I ever was going to be a woman I'd be her. Because she was everything that I wanted to be, you know? But anyways.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Monica came out as trans and two spirit — if you’re not familiar, ‘two spirit’ covers a range of cultural, spiritual, sexual, and gender identities in Indigenous cultures. It’s a concept that was systematically erased by colonization. In recent decades, however, it has seen a renaissance. When Monica came out, it wasn’t common to hear people talk about the “trans community.” Trans people were scarcely mentioned in the media. If they were, they were often presented as caricatures — sensations, punchlines, freaks and oddities, on daytime TV. Or, as dead bodies on shows like Law and Order — with no real back story, or personality, beyond just being transgender. Generally, public, visible, trans people were a rarity. To come out as trans was to be targeted and harassed.

MONICA FORRESTER: There was so much stigma and discrimination towards trans people. Trans women particularly and trans women of colour that were mostly homeless. We lived in the shadows of the community and we really were never acknowledged. I was so young. I was 19, 20. But to see my friends that were the same age dying from suicide or overdose or from HIV and AIDS, right. And the fear that they -- they didn't want to go to the hospital because of the stigma about being dead-named or not being respected as the gender they were. It was just really hard.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Dead-naming: It’s the continued use of a trans person’s birth name, even after they have come out. Calling a trans person by their chosen name is really the bare minimum you can do in terms of respect. For Monica, that stigma and discrimination made it pretty clear that she wouldn’t be hired in an office, or a restaurant.

MONICA FORRESTER: I didn't think I'd ever be a sex worker, but it pushed me there because I was homeless. I needed to eat. I needed to transition. I needed things that I needed to do to survive. So it was survival at first. And then you know I started transitioning. I needed surgeries to be more in line with who I was. You know, I wanted to live in a place that was comfortable. Why did I have to live off welfare where I have to live in a room, where I can live in a home and feel safe? Also sex work is work! It is work, believe me. I'm still doing sex work, casually. But it's work. Our customers can be very demanding [big laugh] you know what I mean? When you get into the sex industry, you don't need to have credentials. You don't need to have work experience. You can be your own boss. And there's a lot of work that goes into sex work. You have to advertise, customer service. Plus you've got to do the services. And then you've got to negotiate that over the laws that restrict you from doing a lot of that stuff. It's just like any other job. Some jobs we love them, some jobs we hate them. I had times in sex work when I hated it. I fucking hated it. I hated that I had to do it. But I did it.

[Chill hop music ends]

MONICA FORRESTER: Now I have opportunity. I can do a client when I want to do a client. I don't have to do a client. And sometimes you know sex work is short-term, people go in and out of it. But sometimes it's a very lucrative business. I made -- I shoulda been - I should've had a million houses by now. [laughs]

JUSTIN LING: Monica has one of those early ads framed on her mantle. She went by Alicia in those days: the ads says she’s got “a booty like J.LO.” The more time she spent in the industry, the more time she spent helping and educating her colleagues.

MONICA FORRESTER: Trans women that were are coming into the scene or working the streets at the time, I would kinda educate them on safe sex. Because even though we were a marginalized group we kinda kept each other safe. We kept each other educated and protected.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] In 1996, an attack on the trans community would underscore just how fragile their safety really was.

[DOCUMENTARY CLIP]: On Victoria Day nineteen ninety-six. Three members of our community were slaughtered.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] This is from a documentary produced later that year called TranzInfo. Underneath the narration there’s photos of three people: ‘Junior’ Keegan, Deanna Wilkinson, Brenda Ludgate. The documentary cuts to a shot of fireworks being lit off in Allen Gardens Park. White text flashes on the screen: "the gunshots were masked by the sound of fireworks" it says.

On that Victoria Day, May 20, 1996, Marcello Palma picked up a revolver, got into his truck, and went out with a plan to kill transgender sex workers. He would gun down three women before being arrested. He killed Junior and Deanna on the same stroll where Alloura would work, a decade later. Even though Palma was a john, a customer of these workers, he called them “scum.” He hated them. The coverage in the media made it pretty clear how someone could develop such a disgusting notion that these workers were less than human.

Deanna was transgender. It’s hard to say how Junior self-identified, but their father said they no longer wanted to be a man. And Brenda, she was actually cisgender — a casualty of Palma’s crusade against trans women.

But in the papers, these women were mocked. The papers exclusively referred to Deanna by her birth name. They published the victims HIV status and called them “quasi women.”

Columnist Rosio DiManno wrote a column suggesting that society isn’t to blame at all for their deaths. She wrote quote “it is a grievous insult to suggest that the rest of us have somehow contributed to these triple murders by not doing enough to embrace, and to reinforce, gay rights or prostitutes rights. Where is the correlation between all of us and the madness of one person's killing rampage."

That columns looks so similar to what ran in the papers in the 1970s, brushing off a culture that led to gay men being systematically killed.

Palma would ultimately be convicted on three counts of first-degree murder. The killings, however, would not be prosecuted as a hate crime.

[NEWS CLIP]: What kind of role has transphobia played in the murders, how can we as a community fight the discrimination based on a daily basis?

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Just like the gay community two decades before, trans people were coming out. And they were learning that society didn’t always take kindly to people who were different. More than ever, activists like Monica realized they needed their own spaces. Safe spaces.

MONICA FORRESTER: There was this big alarm bells that went off that we needed to really focus on trans people in our communities.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] The 519 community centre, a queer-focused hub that sits right in the heart of the Village, tried to fill that space. They posted a job for a trans outreach coordinator.

MONICA FORRESTER: So I applied and I got the job. I had to be sex worker And I said, Hey, what a better position [Laughter] What better way to get a job than, you know what I mean.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Monica, and another trans activist, helped create that dedicated space. They called it Meal Trans: It was a place where any trans person could come and grab a bite to eat. But also, where they could just be with other trans people.

MONICA FORRESTER: It was a moment where (the) community felt like, People cared about me and my life does matter. Because we're giving them that space to grow and say, Yes, you deserve to live. Yes, you deserve medication. Yes, you deserve the things that other people have. We were allowed to be able to work with the community through a harm reduction approach, so making sure they had condoms and stuff when they were doing their work. Make sure they had information that they can relate to. Because there was never resources for trans people. When we read things at doctors' offices or at community centres, we gravitate to things that identify with us.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] It’s impossible to list all the ways in which trans people were disadvantaged, discriminated against, and forgotten about by society.

I don’t want to make it sound like being trans was some miserable experience at the time — for lots of trans people, it wasn’t.

And even for those who had a really rough time, it wasn’t because they were trans. It’s because society found ways to make their lives difficult.

Take the shelter system. When many people find themselves out of a job, out of their apartment, and on the street, they can turn to shelters. They’re not perfect, but they can at least put a roof over your head.

For many trans people, that wasn’t even an option.

MONICA FORRESTER: But our shelter systems weren't allowing trans women to go into the shelters that they felt safe (in) or identified with their gender. So I worked hard with the city to do a consultation with all the shelters to see how accessible they are for trans women. And not one of them was.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] It was not uncommon for trans women to only be welcomed into women's shelters if they presented as quote-unquote female. Or what society thinks it means to be female.

MONICA FORRESTER: I was in workshops and I said how many women here are wearing skirts? There was one woman wearing a skirt. I see women that are looking very masculine in this group, why are you putting these kind of criterias on trans women for the safety of all women in spaces? Women look all different ways, it doesn't mean they're less of a woman if they're masculine, have hair on their face, whatever.

[Monica fades into the background]

<beat>

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Monica and Alloura came out two decades apart, but the Toronto they knew wasn’t all that different.

Around 2015 Alloura was homeless: living in a tent encampment with some other people. She was only 24. She’d already been in and out of jail for years. On her criminal record, most of her charges say NFA: No fixed address. That spring, one charge lists an address as a women’s shelter. A couple months later, she lists her home as Seaton House, a men’s shelter. Then it’s back to the women’s shelter. Then back to Seaton House. We don't know why Alloura moved back and forth between shelters that year. Maybe the women's shelters were full. As they often are.

Or maybe she didn't want to face any transphobia she'd experienced there in the past.

Or maybe she was giving the shelter's addresses when she got arrested ... but was actually living with her new boyfriend.

MONICA FORRESTER: So Alloura met up with Guy,

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Alloura’s new boyfriend. Augustinus Balesdent.

MONICA FORRESTER: Talking from my own experience coming out very young, relationships are really important. Especially when you're trans because you feel so isolated and alone.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] For her friends, Alloura’s new relationship seems, at first, like good news. The two of them get an apartment, for a time. Although, they move around a bit. Then it’s back to no fixed address. And more charges. The two of them seem totally entangled with the law: On top of every arrest, there’s always more charges for “failure to comply” or for not showing up to a court date. There’s all sorts of things mixed up in this. Drug use. Economic precarity. Homelessness … it's complicated. One day her childhood friend Ally gets a text. Alloura had just gotten out of jail.

ALLY JACKSON: [Over the phone] I was like, why are you in jail? I didn't even know that you were in jail what the F that's crazy, she says, I had a warrant. She says for missing court and fingerprints. I said, okay, but what did you do? She says, I stole from Shoppers Drug Mart.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Alloura got caught stealing from a pharmacy.

ALLY JACKSON: [Over the phone] She says now I'm bawling my eyes out, trying to find my boyfriend. We have no phone and no place, and I'm stuck walking around looking for him. Does he have Facebook, Facebook him that you're going to be somewhere tomorrow. You need a place to stay in the meantime? She's like, yeah I do -- a place to put as my address for bail. I said okay, use mine. She says, I'll do that, thanks.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] There’s one thing we keep hearing from Alloura’s friends and family: The relationship with Balesdent was toxic. We can even see some of it. They had these sprawling fights that would play out of their Facebook walls. Alloura told her friends that Baldesent beat her violently. While none of them told us they saw it first hand, they believed Alloura when she told them. Her friend Layla says she remembers seeing Alloura in rough shape.

LAYLA: Every couple of months I would see her in person. I could just really see the wear and tear. Um - just marked up with abrasions everywhere, beaten by this man that she was with was like.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] We’ve put these allegations to Baldesent but he has not responded. But we did get his rap sheet. He was never charged for assaulting Alloura. But on his criminal record, one charge does stick out that seems to support her friend’s concerns. In 2016 he was charged with robbing, sexually assaulting and threatening to kill someone at a public housing complex near The Village. He pled guilty to making the death threat and spent two months in jail.

MONICA FORRESTER: So I understand how trans women gravitate to men. Or to partners - I'm not going to say men in general, but to partners for support. And stuff like that. Even though that relationship was toxic on so many levels, you know what I mean. He was very abusive, and their circumstance wasn't the greatest. They were living under the bridge, they were doing — I'm not saying that circumstance was bad, but they were using drugs, which is fine.

So, she really looked out to coming to Maggie's. Just for that support and kind of escape to be in a space where she can -- she would sleep half the time there, which was welcoming. Or she would put on her makeup or just engage with community and talk about what's going on in her life.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Alloura clearly wanted to get off the streets. But she wanted to do it with Balesdent.

MICHELLE WHEELER: He asked me if he could stay with me, (and)I said he could. But he said the only way that he would come is if Augustinus comes, So I said, no, I have two kids here. I'm not having that. I'm sorry.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] She reached out to Ally too.

ALLY JACKSON: And she's like, I am homeless. I got kicked out of my place. And Augustinus is also homeless. And we've been just like sleeping here, there, and like, wherever I can. Can I Come stay with you. Well, at that time I was married, right? So my husband wasn't comfortable. And I was like, I can't like I'm sorry, though, you know, I would love to. I just I just can't.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Alloura didn’t have a phone, but would often check her Facebook at a local internet cafe. That’s how she would get in touch with Layla.

LAYLA: She never had a contact number. It was kind of a little bit exhausting to track her down to and she was always running from me like, you know, she was ashamed and embarrassed of herself.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Layla was still living in Montreal. She was learning first hand that, while there was still plenty of discrimination against trans people in society, things were improving. There were opportunities. Healthcare for trans people was expanding. Workplaces couldn’t just fire you anymore. Social acceptance was growing.

LAYLA: I had made a life in Montreal for myself. And I was happy, so I wasn't going to go back to the streets. I had done a hundred and ninety thousand dollars in plastic surgery, I changed my name. I changed my sex designation of my birth certificate legally. I was going to school in Montreal, I had -- I completed my transition. I was I was feeling really good about myself. I didn't need drugs anymore. You know, I was recognized as a girl - woman. My transition felt complete. I had success and everything that I talked about that I wanted to do and everything that she ever wanted to do, I did. And she was just she was ashamed of herself and embarrassed.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Every once in a while, Alloura and Layla would video chat.

LAYLA: Honestly, I thought she was going to be a superstar. [sadness]

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Layla wanted to help Alloura get on her feet. So, in the summer of 2017, she asked Alloura to come to Montreal. Layla’s birthday was coming up, and she was finishing beauty school. She wanted Alloura to be a hair model for her final exam.

LAYLA: I loved her to death, but the only thing I could do for her was tell her to come my way.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Layla sent her the money for a bus ticket. But Alloura never came. She later confessed to spending the money on drugs.

LAYLA: And she admitted it. She was sorry. She apologized. It was fine. I accepted it. I'm not judging her. What can I do? She didn't keep it from me. She said, like, I was hurting. I just I needed some dope. (Yeah) I had sent her a ticket and extra money, so I said buy the ticket and the drugs. So this time I thought that she was actually coming into Montreal. She had just gone and retrieved the ticket from Greyhound.

[Music fades in]

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] But Alloura … never arrived

LAYLA: But I just figured maybe she had changed her mind and that this guy was holding her back because she was in love. And what business was it of me? Like, I was doing my thing. You know I figured, She doesn't have her parents anymore. She has no family pretty much that's close to her. So if she's in love, if she's experiencing that, why not let her have it? (emotional, breaking up)

[music fades out]

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Alloura kept saying she wanted to come visit. So Layla, she didn’t give up. On July 18 2017 they talked again.

[Episode closing music]

LAYLA: July 18th is the last time I ever spoke to her.

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] do you remember what you talked about on the 18th?

LAYLA: This was it. She wasn't going to try again to have a cell phone and she was living under a bridge.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Under a bridge. In the Rosedale Ravine.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Coming up this season on The Village

[mini trailer for episode 2]

MONICA FORRESTER (ep 2): I was like, where's Alloura? Everyone was talking about it but no one knew where she was.

LAYLA (ep 2): She would never go down there alone…

SEARCH LEADER (ep2): We're going to be navigating, again, rougher terrain and we're going to go right up the Rosedale Valley

[NEWS CLIP]: They say it's too soon to know if there's a link to the murder of another prostitute, Cassandra Do, this summer

RONDA: the last time I had seen her, she was terrified!

MONICA FORRESTER: We're still walking in fear knowing that person's still out there.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] The Village is written and produced by me, Justin Ling and Jennifer Fowler.

Sound design by Julia Wittmann, with help from Evan Kelly.

Our Associate Producer is Eunice Kim and our digital producer is Fabiola Melendez Carletti.

Thank you to Boyd Kodak for the use of TranzInfo.

Alex V Green, Faith Fundal and Chris Oke are our story editors.

Our senior producer is Cesil Fernandes.

And the executive producer of CBC Podcasts is Arif Noorani.

If you haven’t listened yet, please go back and listen to The Village Season One--my investigation into serial killer Bruce McArthur and the spate of unsolved murders from the Village, dating back to the 70s. All nine episodes are available now on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Music fades out]

Transcript: The Village, S2 E1: Alloura

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