Identified! FL - Clermont, WhtMale UP6030, 24-32, transgender, breast implants, 25 September 1988 * id'd March 2025 Pamela Leigh Walton*

[liminal-limitless]

I was used to "cross-dressers" and not people who had transitioned. Maybe there were more than we knew about?

From what I know about being trans back in the day, they used to basically make you cut off all contact with anyone who knew you prior to your transition in order to access hormones/surgeries, and fully start your life over in a new place, so that none of the new people you met would have any idea you were trans. So there definitely were more trans people than anyone knew about, but no one knew their histories because they categorically did not disclose to anyone. (Correct me if I'm wrong, I was not alive in the 70s)

 

[iamshadow21]

From what I know about being trans back in the day, they used to basically make you cut off all contact with anyone who knew you prior to your transition in order to access hormones/surgeries, and fully start your life over in a new place, so that none of the new people you met would have any idea you were trans. So there definitely were more trans people than anyone knew about, but no one knew their histories because they categorically did not disclose to anyone. (Correct me if I'm wrong, I was not alive in the 70s)

I'm not from that era either, but I have never heard of such a requirement. In fact, community amongst queer and trans people is and always has been a deeply important part of social and medical transition, from the earliest known official medical transitions in the early twentieth century onwards.

Some people who wanted to pass as cis and did not have supportive family and friends may have chosen that extreme on their own, but I've never heard of it as a requirement. It's not like getting out of rehab or prison.

MOO

 

[Susikatze]

I'm not from that era either, but I have never heard of such a requirement. In fact, community amongst queer and trans people is and always has been a deeply important part of social and medical transition, from the earliest known official medical transitions in the early twentieth century onwards.

Some people who wanted to pass as cis and did not have supportive family and friends may have chosen that extreme on their own, but I've never heard of it as a requirement. It's not like getting out of rehab or prison.

MOO

I agree. Most trans cases from the earliest like Lilli Elbe in the 1930s to the 1970s and 80s (eg Austrian skier Erik/a Schinegger), they did not deliberately cut contact with anyone (unless some family members or friends shunned them for their choice). Pamela may have chosen to move to a different state before or during her transition but it was never required.

jmoo

 

[bflocket]

I found a post on FB about the identification where the posting person said something about a “Carlisle County” high school and that’s way out west on the Mississippi River.

I’d just assumed that Nicholas County is kind of redneck-y. My uncle ran the shooting club for 4H in my county and they had gun tournaments near Carlisle. I haven’t been there but have been around Fleming County and through Bath County. In some kind of super-weird coincidence, a guy I know from Flemingsburg’s cousin moved my town (tiny and terminally boring between Bardstown and Louisville way west of there). His wife is on my “town board” and proposed starting meetings with a prayer. He cautioned me not to talk to them about politics or religion since they’re from the land of tongue talkers, snake handlers and poison chuggers that think that stuff helps them when talking to God.

Lexington would be the closest city to Carlisle and is the home of UK. It should be the state capitol since I was born there and spent a drug-fueled semester there in 98 or 99. When my mom was in med school there, one of her professors was Sybil’s doctor (the one that Sally Field tells some story about enemas to in the movie). I guess that was sort of progressive for whenever that happened, but I just can’t imagine Lexington as somewhere that would be a hub for sex-change surgery back in the 1980’s.

The date from the arrest in Lexington and when the body was discovered in Florida are REALLY close. It is pretty easy to get to Florida from there (straight down 1-75). It just seems like Pamela/Lee’s life was mostly in Kentucky and Florida’s pretty far in that sense. So they might have been having their work done down there. Or someone from up here could have taken them down there and killed them or took their body there. I’ve heard about where a killer from Kentucky took a body a few states away to dump it.