A Pennsylvania man was convicted of stabbing a transgender fashion designer from Philadelphia more than 40 times, cutting off her legs and tossing her body into the Schuylkill River five years ago, prosecutors said this week.
Akhenaton Jones, 41, faces a mandatory life sentence for the horrific murder and mutilation of Dominique “Rem’mie” Fells, 27, a freelance wig and clothing maker with whom he had formerly been romantically involved, Philly District Attorney Larry Krasner announced Monday.
“It’s one of the most savage and personal and hateful crimes I’ve ever seen,” Assistant DA Ashley Toczylowski said of the June 2020 killing at a press conference.
Fells’ badly beaten torso was pulled from the river near Bartram’s Garden during an unrelated search for two missing teens on June 8, 2020, authorities said. Her legs, which had been stuffed into a garbage bag, were recovered from the waterway days later.
Investigators searching Jones’ house found it splattered with blood — along with a knife, an electric saw, and white hazmat suit drenched in blood, prosecutors said.
Surveillance footage later showed him taking a trash bag out of the house and loading it into a white van.
He was then seen driving the van to the river in surveillance footage, authorities said.
Jones and Fells had been friends for more than three years and were intimate in the past, Walter Chisholm, Jones’ court-appointed lawyer, told the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Jones insists another man murdered her then forced him to help dispose of her body, according to Chisholm.
He was found guilty last week of first-degree murder, possession of an instrument of crime and abuse of corpse.
His previous trial in December was declared a mistrial because the jury couldn’t agree if he was guilty of first-degree murder and possessing an instrument of crime.
He is scheduled to be sentenced in September.
Fells was artistic and enjoyed “having fun and being vibrant,” friend Madelyn Morrison said shortly after her death.
“She always showed us these pieces of hers that were so brilliant, so creative,” Morrison told the Inquirer in June.
There have been more than 370 cases of fatal violence against transgender and gender non-conforming people in the United States since 2014, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
