In the cold of New Year's Day 2013, a 22-year-old aspiring rapper named Male Evon Young was last seen in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Known in the local music scene as Yung LT, Evon was a young transgender man with plans for the future, including an upcoming album. Concern grew quickly when he failed to show up for his job at a Perkins restaurant and missed a scheduled meeting with his mother the following day, January 2nd.
His roommate, Billy Griffin, initially told police that Evon had left their shared home on North 52nd Street around 10:45 a.m. in a Chevrolet Impala. As his family began distributing flyers and pleading for information, this initial account would soon unravel, revealing a far more tragic and violent reality behind his sudden disappearance.
The investigation pivoted from a missing person case to a homicide after Evon's mother found a cell phone near their home, which police traced to two of the men who would later be implicated. The roommate's story crumbled under scrutiny, and he eventually admitted his involvement in Evon's death. Authorities charged Griffin and four other men—Victor Stewart, Ashanti McAlister, Ron Joseph Allen, and Devin Lattrez Seaberry—with first-degree intentional homicide. The motive was determined to be gang-related; Griffin was allegedly offered reinstatement into the Chicago-based Black P. Stones gang if he participated in the killing of Evon, who was accused of helping in a burglary of Griffin's home the previous year. Investigators have stated that Evon's identity as a transgender man was not a factor in the crime, as the perpetrators were reportedly unaware of it.
The details that emerged through confessions and court proceedings were harrowing. On January 1, the men lured Evon into the basement of his own home. There, he was brutally attacked, beaten with tools, choked with a chain, and had a plastic bag taped over his head until he lost consciousness. Ashanti McAlister then shot Evon three times. Afterward, the men cleaned the basement with bleach, wrapped Evon's body in a sheet, placed it in a trash bin, and set it on fire. Despite extensive searches of a landfill in Menomonee Falls in February 2013, his remains have never been recovered. The case is closed, and it was regretfully determined that Evon Young was deceased. All five men involved were convicted for their roles in the murder. Ron Allen and Ashanti McAlister were sentenced to life in prison, while the others received varying sentences based on plea deals and convictions on lesser charges. The case remains a profound tragedy, the story of a young life full of promise, cut short by a senseless act of violence, leaving a family without answers and a community to mourn a loss for which there is no grave.Last Seen: Jan 1, 2013
