A convicted killer man who brutally murdered his wife is serving a life sentence in a women’s prison. Robert Kosilek now calls himself “Michelle” and was quietly transferred into the Massachusetts Correctional Institution Framingham (MCI Framingham) women’s prison with the legal assistance of the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders (GLAD Law).
Kosilek, now 76, violently murdered his wife Cheryl McCaul at their condominium in Mansfield, Massachusetts. Cheryl’s body was discovered in the back seat of her gray Hyundai parked in a shopping mall lot in North Attleborough on the evening of Sunday, May 20, 1990.
She had been strangled with a rope and a wire to such an extent that her head was nearly severed. Her body was exposed in a graphic sexual manner, with her top pulled up and her pants around her ankles.
A taxi driver testified that he picked up Kosilek from the same mall on the afternoon of May 20, and drove him to a store located near Kosilek’s house in Mansfield. That evening, according to court records, police in North Attleborough received a telephone call from Kosilek stating that his wife had not come home that evening and asking whether there had been any reports of possible vehicular accidents in the area.
The police told Kosilek that they had located his wife’s car, and they asked him to come to the police station, which he agreed to do. At the station, Lieutenant Michael Gould told Kosilek that “a body was found in the back seat” of his wife’s automobile. Lieutenant Gould questioned Kosilek, who claimed that his wife had not come home after going to work earlier in the day.
On May 22, Kosilek, who was still being questioned by authorities in connection with his wife’s death, was involved in an automobile accident in Bedford. Police who arrived on the scene noted that Kosilek was “dressed in women’s clothing.” Though he crashed into a stop sign, Kosilek had passed a sobriety test, and was therefore released.
However, two days later, on the afternoon of May 24, police in New Rochelle, New York, stopped Kosilek for speeding only to discover a partially-consumed bottle of vodka in the car. Kosilek was arrested for driving while intoxicated, and remarked to the officer, “You would be drunk too if the police thought you killed your wife.” Later, at the New Rochelle police station, Kosilek commented: “I had a fifteen year old son and a wife. I can’t call my wife. I murdered my wife. Now, I need to call a psychiatrist.”
Kosilek was taken to the psychiatric unit of a New York hospital and subsequently was brought back to Massachusetts by the State police, where he was charged with first-degree murder.
After his arrest, Kosilek began claiming to identify as a “transsexual” and adopted the name Michelle Lynne. For a period of time, he was also considered a potential suspect in the unresolved serial slayings of nine women in New Bedford in April to September 1988, as he had lived there during that time.
During the two days between his initial traffic stop and his arrest in New York, the court was told, Kosilek had gone on a shopping spree and bought “hundreds of dollars of women’s clothing and jewelry.”
While incarcerated awaiting trial, Kosilek changed his name to Michelle Lynne and, in 1992, launched a campaign from his prison cell to become the sheriff of Bristol County. He claimed to represent what he called the “New Women Party” and ran on a platform that focused on prison reform to benefit trans-identified male inmates.
During the trial for the murder of his wife, which took place in 1993, Kosilek was permitted to wear makeup and jewelry. Photographs of Kosilek with long hair taken during the proceedings depict him posing for the camera, and he was referred to with feminine pronouns by the court.
Kosilek rationalized the savage slaying of his wife as an act of “self-defense” after he said she had walked in on him while he was wearing her clothing. During a series of recorded interviews presented as evidence in court, Kosilek reportedly accused Cheryl of flying into a “transphobic rage” upon seeing him wearing her clothes, and he claimed that she poured boiling tea on his genitals and threatened to kill him.
It was at this point, according to Kosilek, that he “went into a blackout” as a result of “the trauma of it,” and killed Cheryl by strangling her both with a piano wire and rope, pulling so violently that she was nearly decapitated.
Kosilek and Cheryl McCaul had first met in the 1980’s while she was working as a volunteer counselor at a drug rehabilition center. Kosilek was one of her patients, and according to him, she had hoped to cure his “sexual issues.”
Kosilek was involved in extensive litigation against the Massachusetts Department of Corrections (DOC) for thirty years, beginning in 1992 and ending in 2022 after he underwent tax-payer funded genital surgery.
As a result of decades of legal claims, the convicted murderer was quietly transferred to the women’s prison MCI Framingham on September 9, 2019, two years before he would undergo genital surgery. Prior to this, he was housed at MCI Norfolk, a medium security facility for men.
In 2002, responding to a legal complaint from Kosilek requesting feminizing hormones and surgery, Judge Mark Wolf ruled that there was a “serious medical need,” but did not order state-funded surgical castration until ten years later. Judge Wolf’s decision requiring the DOC to finance Kosilek’s surgery stated that the DOC was committing “cruel and unusual punishment” in denying Kosilek’s request to have his genitalia removed. This was a landmark decision and was the first such order issued in the United States.
Following his legal victory, Kosilek demanded $698 in personal compensation along with $800,000 in legal fees, prompting his victim’s family to speak out.
“It’s an outrageous request,” said Susan Ohannessian, Cheryl McCaul’s niece, in a 2012 interview. “He doesn’t deserve a dime as far as I’m concerned. The longer he speaks out, the longer he clogs the system with this garbage, the sadder it gets. He’s trying to make himself the victim.”
However, in 2014, the order requiring the DOC finance Kosilek’s surgery was overturned by the First Circuit Court of Appeals on the basis of safety concerns, as it was believed he would be targeted for sexual assault by male inmates at MCI Norfolk. The DOC had argued that having an inmate with a surgically-created “vagina” in a men’s prison would create a safety “nightmare” for both the inmate and the staff.
In 2018, Kosilek filed a new lawsuit demanding both genital surgery and a transfer to women’s prison Framingham. As part of the evidence submitted on his behalf, Kosilek sought and obtained data about female inmates’ convictions. Specifically, Kosilek requested information regarding how many women were incarcerated at Framingham for the murder of another woman, presumably to justify his transfer.
In the complaint, filed in August 2018, Kosilek cited a Criminal Justice Reform Bill passed by Governor Baker just four months prior. The law established new mandates on the basis of “gender identity,” and granted inmates the right to request housing in a facility of their choice. It also codified tax-payer funded “transgender” surgeries as a right.
The superintendent of MCI Framingham, Lynn Bissonnette, testified that Kosilek’s history of committing a violent crime against a woman might traumatize the female inmates at the prison, many of whom are survivors of domestic abuse. However, she further argued that it would be Kosilek who was at risk of assault, rather than the female inmates. To mitigate the competing risks, Bissonnette said that maximum emphasis would be placed on integrating Kosilek with the general population of women.
According to court transcripts, Kosilek was backed by Dr. Stephen B. Levine, a psychiatrist appointed by Judge Mark Wolf as an independent, court-appointed expert in Kosilek v. Spencer. Levine specializes in sexual dysfunction and transsexualism and founded the Case Western Reserve Gender Identity Clinic in Cleveland during the 1970’s. He also served as Chair of the fifth edition of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s (WPATH) Standards of Care in 1998, and was on the American Psychiatric Association DSM-IV Subcommittee on Gender Identity Disorders.
Levine recommended Kosilek for surgery and “testified that he could not imagine anything more cruel” than denying him the procedure. Following his role in the litigation, Levine was officially employed by the Massachusetts DOC in as a Gender Dysphoria Consultant, a role he has held continuously for over 15 years.
Most recently, Levine offered his testimony in support of a transgender baby killer housed in Indiana who sued the state to fund his “gender affirming” surgeries. The United States District Court of Indiana ruled that Autumn Cordellioné, born Jonathan C. Richardson, had been subjected to “cruel and unusual punishment” by being denied the various plastic surgeries he had asked for.
Among a list of requests prepared by Richardson and presented as evidence in court was a document titled “Surgeries to Reach My Ideal Self.” The first item on the list, the court heard, was a “vagina,” followed by: breast implants, a brow lift, a brow reduction, a tummy tuck, gluteal implants (BBL), a uterus transplant, hair removal, and wigs.
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