A man convicted of the brutal murder of his mother has been quietly transferred into a women’s prison in Illinois. Kmuel Kevin King is currently incarcerated at Logan Correctional Center (LCC), a facility for female inmates, despite being described as “male” within the state’s Department of Corrections records.
As LCC has been housing trans-identified male convicts in recent years, King’s transfer suggests that he has claimed to identify as a woman in order to secure the move, though this detail is not explicitly stated within his listing on the Illinois Department of Corrections (DOC) website. Additionally, recent photos of King provided by the DOC reveal him as having an overtly masculine appearance.
King is serving an 80-year prison sentence for the cold-blooded murder of his mother. In 1995, King and his then-girlfriend Monica Cosby were living with his mother, Bobbie Jean King, in a one-bedroom and one-bathroom apartment. Cosby’s three children, aged seven, four, and one at the time, as well as Bobbie Jean’s infant son, were also residing in the cramped conditions with the Kings.
Tensions between the three adults peaked during the Christmas holiday season. Bobbie Jean had repeatedly insisted that Cosby and her three children leave the apartment, as she had relinquished her bedroom to them while sleeping on the floor next to her son’s crib.
Cosby testified during trial that, in the early hours of December 27, King consumed alcohol and marijuana at a gathering in a neighboring apartment. When he returned to his mother’s apartment, the two began to argue in the bedroom while Cosby ate in the kitchen with her children.
King then entered the kitchen and informed Cosby that he had just killed his mother, doing it “for [her].” He then took her to the bathroom to show her his mother’s body.
According to court records, King requested Cosby’s assistance in covering his mother’s body with dirty laundry. “Blood from Bobbie’s beaten head covered the floor. At Kmuel’s request, Cosby fetched a plastic bag. Although in a statement to the police Cosby stated that she placed the bag over Bobbie’s head, at trial she testified that Kmuel did it,” reads a 2005 statement from the US Court of Appeals.
“Kmuel tied an electrical cord around the bag. Together, they maneuvered the body into the bathtub, placing plastic bags of laundry over her. They also bound Bobbie’s arms and legs. Cosby and Kmuel then engaged in sexual relations on the living room floor while the children were asleep in the bedroom… The next morning the body remained in the bathtub, even as the children used the bathroom.”
During trial, a medical examiner testified that Bobbie Jean was still alive when the plastic bag was tied over her head, and after she had been bound. The examiner stated that she ultimately died as a result of strangulation, with blunt force trauma to the head as a major contributing factor. Cosby was therefore charged with and found guilty of first-degree murder and concealment of a homicidal death and sentenced to 20 years in prison. King was sentenced to 80 years for first-degree murder.
It is unclear when King was first transferred into Logan Correctional Center, a women’s prison that currently houses 12 biological males who are claiming to be “transgender women.” Among them are at least two men who have been convicted for child sexual abuse, James “Jamie” Boots and Michelle Blessent.
Illinois Department of Corrections officials released an Administrative Directive which went into effect in April 2021 allowing convicts who “self-identify as transgender” to be housed according to their preference.
The Directive was designed to “address the adjustment of offenders self-identified as transgender or suspected of having Gender Dysphoria or other concerns related to gender identity,” and to ensure that prison officials provide “appropriate accommodations … related to gender identity throughout their incarceration.”
The policy allowing men to be housed in a women’s prison came into effect as a result of multiple lawsuits filed against the IDOC by men who claim to identify as female.
In December 2018, Deon “Strawberry” Hampton was presumably the first male inmate to be transferred to Logan. In 2015, Hampton was sentenced to 10 years in prison for a burglary. By 2016, he had begun seeking transfer to a women’s prison, and in 2017, and again in 2018, he filed a legal complaint alleging that he “began living as a girl when she was five years old and has continued to live as a young woman throughout her incarceration.”
Hampton was released in 2019, only to be incarcerated again for burglaries he committed while out on parole. He was immediately returned to women’s facility Logan, where he is currently detained.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Illinois put further pressure on the IDOC when it backed litigation initiated by male convicted killer Andre Patterson. After suing the Department of Corrections, Patterson was transferred to Logan from a men’s facility in 2019. Just two months after being detained at the women’s prison, Patterson was accused by multiple women of sexual assault and rape.
One victim filed an official Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) report against Patterson, and then subsequently, a lawsuit alleging that “IDOC employees covered up the sexual assault… and tried to falsely classify it as consensual, to keep it from being considered a PREA violation.”
Despite the allegations of sexually predatory behavior committed by Patterson, DOC officials have been unsuccessful in their attempts to transfer the killer back to a men’s prison.
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