First reported Daily New 31st March 2010.

“A transgender woman was found dead in her ransacked Queens apartment on Tuesday, her naked body sprawled across the bed, police said.
Edelbuerto Gonzalez-Andujar, 29, who lived as a woman and went by the name Amanda, had not been heard from since Friday.
Her friends got her landlord to let them into her Glendale apartment around 4 p.m. Tuesday.

“We found her on her bed. She was naked,” said Barbara Vega, 35, of Bushwick, Brooklyn. “Everything in the apartment was destroyed. All her Marilyn Monroe pictures were destroyed.”

Police said the medical examiner will perform an autopsy to determine the cause of death. Vega, who believes Gonzalez-Andujar was slain, said she had tried in vain to reach her friend since spending time with her on Friday.

“She never had any problems with anybody. She was full of life,” she said. “We need to know who did this to her.”

Gonzalez-Andujar’s friends wailed as her body, covered in a black plastic bag, was taken out of the 62nd St. building yesterday.
Stephanie Lopez, 19, said she was returning home from school when she saw one of the “hysterical” friends lunge for the gurney that carried Gonzalez-Andujar’s body.

Lopez recalled that another woman screamed: “No! Why, Amanda? Why?”
Lopez said detectives asked her whether she had heard sounds of a struggle or screams coming from Gonzalez-Andujar’s first-floor apartment on Saturday.

Vega said Gonzalez-Andujar’s laptop was missing from the apartment.
She said cops told her they were analyzing surveillance video taken from inside the building showing a man whose face was difficult to make out.

“We need to know who did this to her,” Vega said, recalling a vacation to Jamaica the two had taken in happier times. “

Amanda was one of the first transsexuals I ever met. She’d appeared on Shemale Yum in 1999 and that was the year I went to New York to shoot the first ever Grooby videos with Tony Vee, “Shemale Yum’s New York Transsexuals”. Amanda was on my shortlist along with Lisa Kage, BamBam and Kitty.

We picked up Amanda at her place and suggested we do some out door scenes. She was immediately into it. For a young, English guy who wasn’t exactly a stranger to traveling and to NYC, Amanda was still, very exotic, very different to the girls I was used to – and very funny and cool. I enjoyed my time with her a lot and the scene stuck out as one of the most memorable I ever shot.

Frank worked with her in a fantastic shoot in 2005 and of course, she also appeared in a wild scene in Joey Silvera’s Rogue Adventure #11.

Honestly, I know very little about Amanda apart from two brief encounters. The fact that this sort of crime is committed is bad enough but it does touch home a little more, when it is somebody you’ve met and worked with.
I hope by running this blog and putting this sad news out, people will become more aware of the tragedies that happen to so many, of the girls that we see on our screens each day.

Amanda was 29 when she was murdered, in the last week of March 2010.