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Mom: 'He was a joy to our lives'

Lucas McCauley's mom says his lifestyle - the focus of media attention - "was only a very small part of him."

By NICOLE JOHNSON
Published October 22, 2006

LARGO - Lucas McCauley took trips to the Florida Keys with his mom every year.

He taped ER for his hospital co-workers to watch every week.

And he loved experimenting in the kitchen.

Some weekends, he also dressed up as a woman named "Reshae."

But "that was only a very small part of him," Kim McCauley said of her son's cross-dressing.

"He was a wonderful, caring, decent person who wouldn't lie to you," she said.

It's been almost three years since McCauley found Lucas, or "Luke" as she calls him, stabbed to death in the living room of his apartment. Earlier this month a judge sentenced William McHenry to life in prison for the murder of the 30-year-old. The headline that followed: "Transgender man's killer gets life."

And before that it was the obituary that called Lucas a "she." And the newspaper story that referred to him as a woman.

McCauley, 52, said she long accepted that Lucas was gay and that he occasionally dressed as a woman. But she calls the attention focused on her son's lifestyle unfair.

"Nobody has paid attention to who he truly was," she said. "He cross-dressed on the weekends, but when he was at home or out to eat, he was just like a normal guy."

Gay and lesbian advocates say concerns such as McCauley's are a recurring issue when it comes to gay and lesbian victims of crime.

"We as an organization have a concern that people care less when it's a gay or transgendered person," said Brian Winfield, communications director for Equality Florida.

* * *

Lucas McCauley liked the Beastie Boys and En Vogue.

He was a neat freak.

And as a small child he had an infectious laugh.

* * *

The McCauleys moved to Florida from Wisconsin when Lucas was 5. Kim enrolled the blond chubby-cheeked boy in the Community Christian School in Largo. Though a bit shy, Lucas quickly made friends.

"He could pick you up when you were down with that laugh, and he could pick you up if you were up," McCauley said. But he also had a strong side that came out when need be.

When McCauley and her husband split up in 1989, Lucas said: 'Mom, we'll be fine without him. Don't worry about anything,' " McCauley recalled.

Within weeks, he went out and got a job at Publix. He handed his mother his first paycheck.

"I told him 'no,' " she said. "I couldn't take it."

Instead, Kim McCauley got a job in Eckerd drugstore's photo department. She and Lucas began a relationship that often develops between single-mother and child: They took care of each other.

When McCauley worked the night shift, Lucas packed her lunch. When Lucas needed a getaway, he and his mom jumped in the car and took off for the Florida Keys.

It was on one of those drives that Lucas came out to his mother that he was gay.

"I forget what his words were but he said something like 'Mom, I'm gay,' and I said, 'I know.' And then we discussed it."

A few years after graduating from Community Christian High School, Luke got a job with Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater, where he worked as a unit secretary.

He remained close to his family. So much so that instead of moving out on his own, Lucas decided to stay at home. McCauley, along with her mother and father, who is now deceased, bought a house that included a mother-in-law suite, so Lucas could remain close by.

South of downtown Largo, they settled on a rancher on a quiet street with nice lawns. A pool and screened-in porch separated Lucas' apartment from the main house. On the weekends, Lucas would throw on his music and have a few friends over.

They'd even pull grandma and grandpa out to join the fun, McCauley said. The house was alive.

* * *

Lucas McCauley loved Olive Garden's salad.

As a unit clerk at Morton Plant Hospital, he was often the first person sick patients came in contact with.

Sometimes he went to a gay club called Club Z109.

* * *

It was on a December night that he met a man named William McHenry at the club.

The pair left together and ended up at McCauley's apartment.

The next day, after Kim McCauley hadn't heard from Lucas, she went over to check on him. She found his body in the living room. The walls were covered in blood.

Since then, McCauley's mother has moved into the apartment where Lucas lived. She's covered the walls with pictures and knick-knacks. But it's still hard for McCauley herself to set foot in the apartment.

"This was supposed to be our dream house," said McCauley, who suffers from severe asthma and is on disability. "And it kind of ended up the house of horrors."

On a recent day in her home, dishes, towels, pots and pans were organized ready to be put in the boxes.

McCauley and her mother have decided to go back to Illinois to be closer to family.

McCauley worries a little bit about adjusting to life up North. And more about leaving a place that Lucas loved so much.

"She's protective of her son and all she has left of him is a memory," said Coleen Chaney, a victim assistance specialist for the Largo Police Department who responded to the McCauley home after the murder. "She's a mother without a son, what do you do with that energy when it's taken away from you in an instant?"

You continue to be a mother.

"He was a joy to our lives," McCauley said. "And I want people to know that."

[Last modified October 21, 2006, 20:48:02]