Issue Number 1005 | Mixed Messages | Advocate.com Mixed Messages  |  | Advocate.com

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Mixed Messages
Weeks before he was brazenly killed by his teenage crush, 15-year-old Lawrence King was encouraged to be himself. Did that lesson help send him to his grave?
From The Advocate  April 8, 2008
Mixed Messages

At 8:15 a.m. on February 12, Brandon McInerney, age 14, stormed into the computer lab of Oxnard, Calif.’s E.O. Green Junior High. Armed with a small caliber handgun, he shot 15-year-old Lawrence King twice in the head in front of a roomful of students.

If they didn’t see the execution coming, most of King’s peers at school knew he was being bullied for being proudly gay and flouting male conventions by accessorizing his school uniform with eye shadow and high-heeled boots. In the months leading up to that morning, King had undergone a metamorphosis. Guided by a welcoming support system at the group home where he lived, the teenager was encouraged to dress as he pleased and live as the person he wanted to be. What King and others didn’t recognize was that this encouragement—and his response to it—placed him on a collision course with a culture that found him repulsive.

Even before his death, Larry King was notorious. He was the sassy gay kid who bragged about his flashy attire and laughed off bullying, which for him included everything from name-calling to wet paper towels hurled in his direction. King was an easy target—he stood 5 foot 4 and was all of 100 pounds.

The boy’s unconventional family life was also fodder for gossip around the lockers of E.O. Green. Even though both his parents reside in Oxnard, about an hour’s drive northwest of Los Angeles, King lived at Casa Pacifica, a group home for abused, neglected, and emotionally troubled children. The facility houses kids until they are returned to their families or taken in by foster parents. The average stay at Casa Pacifica, according to staff member Melissa Flavin, is 30 days. King lived there for over four months.

Except for a few short sentences from King’s father to the Los Angeles Times about their grief, the King family has refused to speak to the media, including The Advocate, about Larry’s death or his living situation. “His dad, his name is Greg King…I think that’s his foster father who adopted him,” says David Keith, spokesman for the Oxnard Police Department. “I don’t know where [Larry’s] natural parents are or even if they’re in the picture.”

At a February 22 public memorial service attended by 500 mourners, a Presbyterian minister eulogized King as one of God’s “grand creations,” “a masterpiece” who loved bugs, chess, and licorice. He told a story about how King and his mother, Dawn, crocheted hundreds of scarves for U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. With a shaky voice, the mayor of Oxnard shared his anguish over King’s murder and made a plea for community-wide compassion. No one in the King family spoke. 

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