A transgender woman claims her violent male side is responsible for her murdering three prostitutes in Washington in 1990.
Donna Perry, who used to be Douglas Perry, told police she intentionally underwent gender reassignment surgery in Thailand in 2000 "as a permanent way to control violence," ABC News reported.
Perry, 62, explained to police in 2012 that "there's a great downturn in violence" whenever a person goes from being a man to a woman.
The woman is facing charges for the murders of three prostitutes named Yolanda Sapp, Nickie Lowe and Kathleen Brisbois. Perry allegedly shot the women and left their bodies naked on the Spokane River bank. She is currently held at the Spokane County jail on $1 million bond.
DNA evidence and fingerprints links Perry to the murders, according to court documents obtained by ABC News.
But Perry claims it was not her who committed the murders, but Douglas Perry, the man she used to be.
"I'm not going to admit I killed anybody. I didn't. Donna has killed nobody," Perry told police according to ABC News.
Experts say transgender people do not necessarily view themselves as different people before and after going through their transition.
"For some people, it's a metaphor: 'I was a different person before I came out," Dr. Jack Drescher, a psychiatrist who conducted work for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, told ABC News.
"It's a certain way that they use the metaphor when transitioning for those who were very unhappy before and now are happy. But it's different when a person makes a claim that somehow they have no linkage to the person they used to be," Drescher said. "That would be more of a disturbed presentation."
Though she claims she did not kill the prostitutes, Perry said she is not 100 percent sure Douglas is responsible either.
"I don't know if Doug did or not, it was 20 years ago and I have no idea whether he did or did not," ABC News reported.
