Leslie Nelson -- Deadly Transexual

"I'm Ready for My Close-up, Mr. DeMille"

At long last, a silence came to Sylvan Avenue, drifting like a fog past police cars and ambulances, swallowing the cackle of the squad car radios as it went.

It swept over the ominous black S.W.A.T team truck, over the twitching and exhausted cops who had been holding their sidearms and shotguns at the ready for 14 hours, teasing them with a promise that soon they would get some relief.

It brushed by the television reporters and their crews, past the newspaper reporters and neighbors, promising them that what was about to happen would be well worth the wait. And then, at long last, it settled on the front stoop of Leslie Nelson's two-story wood-frame house.

Officer John McLaughlin

You could still see the detritus of death on the ragged lawn: the discarded rubber gloves and blood-soaked bandages where paramedics had tried and failed to save the life of a wounded cop, John McLaughlin, a veteran investigator for the Camden County, N.J. prosecutor's office. If you looked closely enough you could see the shattered wood on the door jambs where the homemade bullets from Nelson's AK-47 had lodged after passing through the body of Haddon Heights detective Richard Norcross.

Officer John Norcross

If you looked closer still, you could see the droplets of blood where the wounded cop had stumbled out of the front door, while Nelson's mother pleaded with her to stop, just stop shooting. You could see the spot where Norcross' brother, John, a patrolman, was shot and killed by a single round fired from Nelson's bedroom window.

It had been hours since the shooting had stopped and all of Sylvan Avenue was frozen under the glare of the lights cops had trucked in to illuminate the block, making it all into some kind of macabre movie scene.

Leslie Nelson, prison ID photo

Inside, locked in her tiny bedroom, Nelson was rummaging though her closet, searching for precisely the right outfit for the moment. This was, after all, the moment she had chased all her life, the moment when she would be the center of attention, when every eye would be focused on her, when every word would be about her. This was Leslie Nelson's finest moment, and she had to look her best.

Later, someone a cop, a reporter, no one really remembers who would compare the scene to the last few moments of the Billy Wilder film, Sunset Boulevard when the aging and quite mad silent movie queen who had just killed her young paramour floated down the stairs of her old Hollywood mansion and into the waiting arms of police, smiling beatifically and saying, "I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille."

Nelson, an awkward and mannish transsexual who had glamorous celluloid fantasies of her own, was now, at long last getting ready for her close-up.

Outside on the street, the cops and the reporters, the neighbors and the curiosity seekers, waited in silence for Nelson. The cops trained their guns on the front door of the ramshackle house. The news crews maneuvered their cameras to get the best shot of Nelson when she made her entrance.

Slowly the door opened, and the 6-foot, blonde Nelson stepped outside. She shivered slightly in the cool April morning. It was understandable. She was clad only in her ill-fitting, blue-sequined go-go dancer's costume. As the cops moved quickly to surround her and take her into custody and the news photographers clicked away, Leslie Nelson smiled slightly.