What Happened to Brandon Teena’s Most Famous Ex?
(Boys Don’t Cry and The Brandon Teena Story)
The last time Lana Tisdel’s name came up in the press was the year 2000, when she settled a lawsuit with movie distributor Searchlight Pictures for an undisclosed sum.
Although she came off as a protagonist in the 1999 film Boys Don’t Cry, Tisdel didn’t care much for the Hollywood treatment.
Dramatic-license violation: She alleged that the movie used her life story without her permission and unfairly depicted her as a habitual drinker and drug user.
Tisdel (pictured above in her 20s), who had dated Brandon Teena — who was born a girl named Teena Brandon but dressed and lived as a man — also called out Boys Don’t Cry for falsely portraying her as having been present during the shootings that killed Brandon, 22, and witnesses Lisa Lambert, 24, and Phillip Devine, 22, just before New Year’s Day of 1994.
Ex-cons John Lotter and Thomas Nissen had targeted Brandon Teena for murder to quiet a rape case against the two ex-cons.
Maury comes knocking. A year before Boys Don’t Cry, Tisdel herself had appeared in the documentary The Brandon Teena Story, and she seemed like a sympathetic character there, too.
Shortly after the movies came out, Lana and her mother appeared on A Current Affair and The Maury Povich Show.
So what’s become of the hardscrabble, karaoke-loving Nebraska girl portrayed by actress Chloë Sevigny on the big screen?
Pretty as ever. Today, she maintains a presence on the internet, but she uses her married name, Lana Bachman, and probably isn’t looking to satisfy curiosity seekers.
She has a daughter and two sons and at least one grandchild.
Lana, who in her youth resembled actress Jodie Foster, still has long beautiful strawberry blond hair. She has become more striking with maturity.
It’s not clear what type of work she does or whether she and her husband are still together. (She hitched up with a guy from her hometown of Falls City on Dec. 6, 2001, according to Douglas County records.)
Struggle to survive. Sadly, her mother, Linda Gutierres, who came off as a flawed but not irredeemable character in the documentary, died in 2003 at the age of 54.
Her obituary didn’t disclose her cause of death.
Linda Gutierres had a rough life. She was wounded in a stabbing attack by an ex-husband and supported her family on a monthly disability check of less than $400, according to an account by writer Eric Konigsberg, who grew up in Omaha.
Including Lana, Linda Gutierres left four children behind.
Unwitting accomplice. Lana’s father, L.L. Tisdel, was not included in either film but inadvertently played a role in springing Brandon Teena from jail.
He gave Lana a blank check for a perm, but she used it to pay Brandon’s $250 in bail instead.
L.L. Tisdel died in 2007 at the age of 71.
In August 2020, Lana suffered a new tragedy when her Ford pickup crossed a center line and fatally injured Chrysler minivan driver Glenn D. Aston in a head-on crash in Fairview, Kansas. Lana herself suffered injuries requiring hospitalization, but she has since recovered. (Thanks to reader Charlene for writing in with the update.)
You can watch the interviews with Lana Tisdel and Linda Gutierres in the documentary on YouTube.
That’s all for this week. Until next time, cheers. — RR
Read Part I: Brandon Teena’s Killers: 25 Years Later
Thanks R.R. This inspired my poem:
Lana Tisdel
why ya’ lookin’ so dismal?
twas it relations gone fizzle?
if so you must grasp a chisel
and sculpt your new self hot and risible
with a sonnet in my bonnet
with a coin on my groin
you are really hot baby
let’s get us a tenderloin
and not pay
cause I purloin
Love it — thanks!
Gangsta rap?
I am not going to say anything about Lana, because I know little about her. Her predicament was dire and in the aftermath, she bore the blame for the triple homicide. People thought that she didn’t stop it. Her family was also more prominent than the trailer trash that the urbane set chalks everyone involved to be. Boys Don’t Cry was almost entirely based on Kim Peirce’s collaboration with Lana. After the movie was made, Kim Peirce decided to leave Lana penniless in the dust. Peirce also did not name Hillary Swank character as “Brandon” or “Teena”, and Teena Brandon’s family got no money whatsoever from “Boys Don’t Cry.” After Kim left her behind, Lana sued, claiming that the film misrepresented her as a “jobless skank.” This claim was true. Lana was working at the convenience store when Teena appeared in Falls City. Here is the interesting part: Lana’s side was able to successfully stop the distribution of Boys Don’t Cry in parts of Kansas and Nebraska and Kim’s side quickly settled for an undisclosed sum. Thereafter Kimberly Peirce would spin a false story about how the lawsuit actually happened. What do you call a thing that responds to brute force and lacks any sense of human gratitude or compassion?
Lana Tisdel has a very close and a very positive relationship with her daughter, probably amazingly so. Definitely a better relationship than Teena’s with her own mom and possibly better that Lana’s own relationship with mom. I think that Teena Brandon deserves some real credit there. Here is the emotional and spiritual impact of a woman acting like a guy who treats girls like human beings and who gets beaten, raped and murdered for it (you can see it that way). Teena said that she wanted to be a commercial artist, but she was a far more talented actress, and when in high school, she took more religious electives than she did art classes.
Linda Gutierrez, Lana’s mother, may deserve credit here as well, since she was likely a better parent than first appears and she was likely trying to protect Lana from the street. Lana probably bears some of the responsibility for what happened. Teena Brandon herself thought that Lana set her up to get raped, and some folks in Falls City, friends of the convicted, actually, who believe that Lana should have been charged along with the other two. After Teena was assaulted at the Christmas party, she went with Lana to the lobby of a local big hotel practically across the street from Nissen’s house. Teena was at the pay phone dialing numbers desperately trying to get a ride out of town. A side question worth looking into is why nobody came to help her. Nissen and Lotter find them at the hotel lobby and Lana leaves Teena in Nissen’s company while Lotter takes Lana home to her mother. Teena implores, but Lana abandons her. This in itself is a traumatic event, before any set up or betrayal enters into question. People who get brutally tortured are further traumatized by real or imagined abandonment. OSS and SOE operators during WW2 who parachuted behind enemy lines and were later captured, interrogated, and survived the war, later were convinced that someone had to have betrayed them. This was a painful process in which victims sought a rational explanation for their horrendous suffering. Teena could have been similarly traumatized. The big question is whether Lana can be blamed for leaving Teena in the company of her rapists, who had just got done humiliating her at a social gathering. As far as I am concerned, go near any checkpoint with armed men pulling selected people out of the crowd. You will see girls holding on to the arms of their husbands, fathers, boyfriends, and older brothers. These girls are convinced that no harm will come to the man in their life so long as they together with him, and in some cases, little girls are right and they know what they are doing, but Lana was not a little girl, she was 18 and different rules may apply to her. Then there is the fact that Teena was not a boyfriend or older brother to Lana, much as certain segments of LGBT would like to believe in Brandon. Teena was a girl. Lana knew that Teena was female. Lana admitted that she even kissed Teena “as a man,” but this statement also indicates awareness that Teena is a woman. This becomes significant when you consider Michelle Lotter’s performance in Brandon Teena Story documentary. Michelle Lotter has lost weight, she bleached her hair and she is smoking nervously, a bit self consciously, and she says into the camera – “What kind of a person is she (Teena)? She SLEPT with my best friend (Lana)!!!!” Later on Michelle Lotter would come out as a butch gay woman with a wife of her own. Lana herself claims that she has TWO best friends – Michelle Lotter and Leslie Mayfield (Tisdel), her half-sister. This has two implication, first, as a girl, Teena would be third in line to be Lana’s new best friend (and John Lotter trying to drag Lana with him is claiming that both Lana and her half sister Leslie have treated Teena like crap. Why wouldn’t they? Everyone knew that Teena was not fully male, the question everyone obsessed with was if she was male at all); and second, if Lana admitted to kissing Teena, had she also kissed Michelle Lotter, both having admitted to being in a best friend relationship. That would make Lana a successful closeted gay or bi woman, who has ended up throwing Teena under the bus to keep her cover. And there is more. There is a police report showing that after Teena was raped, Lana showed up at a police station, accompanied by her mother and half-sister, and she filed a police report stating that EVERYONE wanted to pull Teena’s pants off to figure out Teena’s biological sex once and for all. The only person who didn’t know that her pants were going to get pulled off at that Christmas Party was Teena herself. This means that Teena really was set up. That whole Christmas party was a set up. Nissen and Lotter sent their girlfriends and children out of the house to spare them the violence of the sexual violence that they were planning. Teena was Lana’s friend, whatever that friendship was, and Lana betrayed her, by not warning her.
People grow as individuals, and they live through regret and remorse. Lana never spoke in depth about Teena Brandon or what happened in Falls City. The interviews she gives are surface and shallow, revealing little, when compared to her court testimony at the murder trial, however, regret and remorse may have been part of the impact that time spent with Teena had on her.
It’s interesting to hear that Lana’s loyalty to Brandon wasn’t steadfast. In the Hollywood movie, she came off as a sympathetic character who was kind to Brandon (and she had a job). It sounds as though her relationship with Brandon was even more complicated than it seemed. I guess realities always are. You can’t tell the whole story in two hours.
Thanks so much for writing in with your perspective. A friend of mine who’s from Nebraska actually knew Lisa Lambert, but she won’t say any more about it. She says it’s just too soon, which I understand, of course. I still don’t like to talk about 9/11, too soon.
RR, would you expect loyalty after a 3 week relationship? Lana first saw Teena on November 23, 1993 in Nissen’s company at the Oasis. Two weeks later Teena knocks on Lana’s house door at the same time that Tom Nissen starts wining and drinking together with Lana’s mother. That would be around December 7. On December 14 Teena gets arrested and is only released on December 24. That Christmas Party is Teena’s first night out of prison.
Lisa Lambert is one adult and a real heroine in this whole mess. When Teena was calling anyone and everyone to get out of Falls City, it was Lisa Lambert, who called Falls City Police. They went looking for Teena, but Lisa did not know that Teena got kicked out of Lana’s and was now staying with Nissen, and when police came knocking, Tisdels told police they had no idea where Teena was. After Teena was raped and everyone in Falls City treated her like a leper, Lisa drove up and took Teena in. Teena did not want to stay with Lisa and was looking to go back to Lincoln. This is interesting.
When one of Teena’s friends (not love conquests) had a child, Teena did not want the baby given up for adoption, she wanted to live with her friend and help her raise the baby (as an aunt). Lisa Lambert was working two jobs and raising a baby as a single mom. She welcomed Teena, whether as a lover or to share in economic hardship is irrelevant. She let Teena drive her car, as if Teena was a guy who came to live with her and asserted his male privilege. Teena could have had what she wanted and helped Lisa raise the baby, but she did not. She took Lisa’s car and went to hang out in Falls City. People warned her about the Falls City crowd that Teena was seeking to join, but she went anyway. Why? Maybe, because Teena always wanted to be an outlaw and this was her chance to do it in real life.
Regarding Lisa Lambert, there is an interesting moment. Lisa wants Brandon for herself. To a point that she goes to Falls City after Teena is locked up, she tells Lana that Teena is a girl. Lana already knows that, so she doesn’t care, but when she relates this in her Court testimony, Lana uses interesting language – she is asked, what she thought about this revelation – and Lana’s response is really interesting – she is just an outsider, who cares what she says. If Lisa is an Outsider, than Lana must be on the inside, but on the inside of what? A gang? A local burglary ring?
So, what is the big reveal about Lisa Lambert, that she was gay or bi? That she was an outcast that the cool set in Falls City despised as a square – meaning that she has to work two jobs to support herself? Aphrodite Jones writes that Lisa dressed in funky outfits, meaning that Lisa was into hip-hop and dated black men? Or was it rebellion against local conservatism. Lisa’s surviving son, Tanner, I think he blames Teena for his mother’s death and he blocks any Brandon fans who try contacting him for information on social networking sites.
Lisa does not only help Teena, she also rescues Philip Devine. Aphrodite Jones reports it wrong. According to her, Philip DeVine meets Leslie Mayfield (Lana’s Half Sister) at Job Corps and comes with her to Falls City for the holidays. Jones reports that DeVine discovers that Leslie Mayfield sleeps with Lenny Landrum and breaks up with her. According to police reports, something else happens. Leslie Mayfield is passionate about keeping Nissen and Lotter out of jail. She puts pressure on DeVine to get involved in some way and to put pressure on Teena to drop charges. This scares Philip Devine so much, that he breaks up with Leslie Mayfield, and Teena Brandon picks him up and drives him to Humboldt. I believe that this was on December 29, 1993. DeVine calls his mother in Denver and tells this story to her, it is not clear what they wanted him to do, but it scares him. DeVine was supposed to take the Greyhound out of Nebraska on December 30, but he does not and ends up being murdered on December 31st.
When I first came across all these facts, I got a distinct inpression that Teena ran into something bigger than the two, maybe the local Ku Klux KLan, but then based on forensic evidence, I now believe that the person who shot the three people was an angry woman hater. There is also Court testimony, that two of the women involved were visiting Lisa Lambert’s relatives to try to find out where Lisa Lambert lived and where Teena was hiding. The real life murder of Teena Brandon reminded me less of Boys Don’t Cry and more of At Close Range, that old 1980’s film. It’s elements positively resonate with the real world case.
I hate that I’m wasting my time to even reply…….ignorant never to be more fitting of a human. I actually feel a little sorry for u. Right up there with Laux …..gross
Sorry BB I quit reading your dissertation once you started misgendering Brandon. I wish I could have finished it though but I figured you were getting ready to let the transphobia start flying.
Lexxi, grow a spine or you’re going to implode. Learn to take that sort of thing (in a comment on the internet, for crying out loud! where anyone can say/read anything for free! it’s not going to injure you or take a cent of your money!) with a grain of salt long enough to glean other possibly worthwhile information. I was able to do that, and I got some new perspective on some people in a case I care about, new information which I feel could be worth considering.
The comment did not burn my eyes or convert me into a transphobe who thinks Brandon was just a confused woman. I was not required to agree with BB’s views in any way. Are you afraid your mind is so malleable that it could be warped by reading a few sentences of something you don’t fully agree with? Or that the purity police will show up and hold you accountable for what you choose to read on your own time (or pat you on the head because you ran away from it)?
Hear, hear!
Brandon wanted to be accepted & loved for who he claimed to be a man. He went to the wrong town (Falls City) & ran with the wrong crowd. They all set Brandon up. Lotter & Nissan told Brandon that if he went to the police about the rape that they wound silence him permanently. And that’s what they did. Falls City is one track minded ppl. If you ain’t one of them? Don’t go. GOD bless the victims.
Let’s not forget the blatantly obvious victim blaming… Whether Teena was warned about that crowd being bad news or not… Nobody deserves to be brutally assaulted nor hunted down like prey & savagely murdered… Why hasn’t that animal’s death sentence been carried out yet is what I want to know…
Thank you for your novel.
First off I am NOT Lana Tisdel’s half sister. We both have the same parents. 2nd she (Lana) NEVER EVER worked at no gas station.
Sorry don’t mean to come off rude but please get ur story right.
Thank You
I AM LANA’S REAL SISTER LESLIE MAYFIELD (TISDEL)
Sad that Lana’s mum died at a young age and had a difficult life. With Brandon’s murder too and a dad who died relatively young, that’s much loss. I hope she now enjoys happiness, not least through her own children and g/children.
Lana’s dad did not die relatively young. Lana’s father was Leland Tisdel (1936-2007) died at 71 years young. You want young? The guy and a girl who lived at Lisa Lambert’s house finally had a child in 1995. He was studying to be a tattoo artist and died around 2015. Parents were split before that and came together for his funeral. Lana’s mom died at 54.
Leland Tisdel is interesting and worth talking about. Jones writes that Nissen lived in a small and filthy house with ketchup stained furniture, practically a shotgun shack. That was a lie. Nissen lived in s two story house in the commercial district in the center of town. Valuable property. Aphrodite Jones was writing a screen play and in her movie, bad people would live in bad houses. Now, Leland Tisdel’s house. I found it in Falls City. It WAS a shotgun shack – you know – one room house. But it was kept impeccably clean. Other people lived there when I saw it. Leland Tisdel’s occupation was listed as an agriculture production worker, a field hand? No wonder he lived in a small house. Lana Tisdel and her mom lived in a very large house. It wasn’t fancy, but it was well lived in. A practical open house. All kinds of people stayed there. Maybe Lana’s mom charged her tenants rent. So, we have Leland Tisdel, an agricultural worker living in a very small house, as we would expect. What everyone forgets is that when Tom Nissen posted $250.00 bail for Teena, he was putting 10% down and the rest was putting up Lana’s house as a collateral. Which means that if Teena jumped bail, the County would sell Lana’s house, take the rest of the bail money, $2,250.00 and give the rest of the proceeds to the Tisdels, after taking out the taxes and processing fees. Nissen was a felon out on parole, he had no business posting bail packages using other peoples’ property. If his parole officer found out about this, he would put him back in jail,. that and he can charge Nissen with felony mortgage fraud – Nissen putting up property as collateral that wasn’t his. If you were in a mess like this, you would be like – oh my God, I don’t want to see my parole officer… What happens instead is that Nissen tells the Court that he was afraid of Leland Tisdel and what he would do to him for putting up the house as a collateral. A violent criminal like Nissen is scared of a 57 year old man, a farm hand, who lives in a tiny little house? Nissen afraid? Later on I heard something to the effect that Leland Tisdel owned FOUR properties in Falls City. What, four houses? Four businesses? Was there more to Leland Tisdel that met the eye?
Thanks BB. Well, 71 IS relatively (operative word) young given that average age of death of males is approaching 85 today (and has not been been 70-odd for several decades). Suffice to say that Lana would have expected both parents to make 80+ with average health.
Interesting info you provide.
Marcus, I agree about average age, but that’s for the comfortable middle class. I wish that I and all my friends live into the 80’s. Average age of death for American police officers is 57. That’s pretty low, even if suicides bring the age down. Two points. I know a Philadelphia Irish dude who made Chief, and he told me that Irish working poor construction laborers he came out of lived physically hard, but short lives, and his point – physically hard but free of mental and emotional stress. He claimed his uncles short lifespans. The person who allegedly molested Teena (can of worms I don’t want to open) allegedly 8 years older than Teena and supposedly died early from drug and alcohol fueled lifestyle. Also consider that Humboldt kid’s life span from 1995 to 2014, Teena may have come from a population where men work construction, party hard, and die relatively young (barring any accidents, like Teena’s father).
There is a really interesting research, a longitudinal study that tracked children born in 1940 and how they lived and how they died of old age. What you do as a young adult into early middle age is a good predictor of how long you will live and if you will develop dementia. They flesh out good and bad habits, and not all of it is self-evident or common sense. Mental health and mental outlook play a big role. I can’t find the link to the complete PDF, but it’s either a 1938 Harvard study of the BLSA (Baltimore study). Try to get the PDF, it’s really good stuff! If I find those notes, I will post the link here.
Thanks. Of course, those in the lower socioeconomic deciles are more likely not to make the average. I was an Army officer for a while: soldiers often don’t make old bones – stress, smoking, poor diet, risk in civilian life, etc. Nonetheless, 71 is pretty poor. If 57 is the average for police officers, that awful and frightening! I’m surprised they recruit!
The States doesn’t do well for longevity compared with Europe and Asia – obesity being the big (if you’ll pardon the pun) killer (dementia’s up there too, but it’s no nearly so clearly linked with obesity). When I first visited the States, in 89, I was struck by how F A T people were. Seems like we’re catching-up in UK…
Law enforcement is not just a job, it is a lifestyle. In addition, law enforcement in America is a ride into upper middle class. Very hard profession to get into, because of good pay, good medical benefits and plentiful vacations and sick days. In New York police, there is unlimited sick time if you are actually sick. A law enforcement career in America offers benefits equivalent to Scandinavian socialism, except for six week vacations with pay. In addition, you can retire with half pay after 20 years of service. Of course, nothing is for free. You risk your life every day and there are other stresses involved with that work. It always amazed me that an average American police officer’s life expectancy closely parallels life expectancy of an average male living in Russia.
Several comments about obesity. Mixing sugar and fat in the same meal will send those calories straight into fat. Think all the burgers and pizzas washed down with soda.
Stress and emotional pain will make it easier to get fat and harder to lose it. There is a term – Emotional Boredom – no access to an emotionally satisfying outlet that will return your love. That makes it easier to get fat. Part of the reason UK was skinnier than US but is now catching up is the economic stress of not being able to pay your bills or of an unexpected expense sending you into free-fall. I noticed that long time economic stress – working poverty – has the same effect as long time political oppression. I think that pre Thatcher UK was not necessarily a happier society, but it was a more stable society with a social net that Americans lost maybe 30 years before Thatcher. I think that the social and economic instability of the American life went global, came to UK and brought obesity with it.
BB: You mention suicide viz police officers. I see that they’re “at a higher risk of suicide than any other profession. In fact, suicide is so prevalent in the profession that the number of police officers who died by suicide is more than triple that of officers who were fatally injured in the line of duty. Researchers are attributing these statistics to the unique combination of easy access to deadly weapons, intense stress, and human devastation that police are exposed to on a daily basis.”
As I mentioned, my own time in the military made me aware that such work appears to shorten life; but in the US, at least, law enforcement is worse still.
I’d say these people earn their relatively good pay and benefits – not least in the stress endured by their loved ones in wondering if they’ll return from that day’s work… Per gun-ownership and the much greater prevalence of violence in the US, your police have a harder time than UK’s (yours are somewhat better paid – not that it compensates for such high risk and early death).
Lana’s Wikipedia page said that Lana’s dad gave her a blank check to get her hair done or something, and she used that blank check to post Brandon’s bail. I wonder which one is true?
That’s the version I know.
Lana’s dad gave her a blank check to get her hair done, about $30.00 USD. Instead, Lana used that money to bail Teena out of jail, $250.00 USD, but she also needed someone over 21 to sign the paperwork, which is why she ended up going to Nissen and Lotter. Teena Brandon’s bail was really $2,500.00 USD, but the Court took the usual 10% with the rest as collateral. Lana Tisdel decided to use her parent’s house as collateral for the rest of the bail. That is why that bail package (paperwork for the transfer of the money and collaterized property obligation) required a 21 year old’s signature. Only a 21 year old can sign the property away. If Teena Brandon fled and became a fugitive, Tom Nissen and Tisdel’s would be on the hook for $2,500.00. If they failed to pay, the state would auction off their house, take out the $2,500.00 and give the rest of the money to the Tisdels. Loss of home.
Nissen was like your average reader in all of this. He thought he was signing bail — if somebody would have told him that he was signing over Tisdel’s house as a collateral, he would have backed away, like any normal person.
It was not his property. It is a fraud felony to knowingly sign away another’s property. Up to ten years in prison if an ex gets a second mortgage using the house that now belongs to the ex and not to both of them.
Nissen was a convicted felon on parole. If his parole officer would have found out about Nissen signing this bail package or if Tisdel’s parents would have complained, Nissen would have ended up back in jail on a parole violation that would have been as serious as his parole officer wanted it to be.
That same Christmas eve, just before Nissen and Lotter descended on Teena, Nissen went to the local police station and asked that Teena Brandon’s bail be revoked and that she be taken back in custody. The police told him that revocation of bail is a court matter and that they must see the judge after the Christmas holiday.
Had this been New York City, where suing the municipality is like hitting the jackpot and everyone sues, once you utter the magic words – I revoke the bail, a warrant squad will arrive and take your long lost cousin away in handcuffs, lest your long lost cousin you are helping out of the goodness of your heart turn out to be a sex fiend or a drug addict who is corrupting your kids when you are not looking.
There is deeper background still, but this offers a better glimpse than media into what was going on with the bail money.
Thanks so much for writing in — it’s great insight I’ve never seen anywhere. Question: If Nissen was worried about going back to prison, why did he rape Brandan?
Why did the shark bite the leg off a surfer? Tom Nissen was a repeat rapist who raped local girls on previous occasions. Tom Nissen was a jobless father of three out on parole, and it wasn’t just the prison that he feared. He was scared of getting into trouble. He was scared of getting into trouble with Leland Tisdel, Lana’s father. What can the old man do to him? Leland’s occupation is officially listed as an agricultural worker and lived in a tiny house, and yet, Leland allegedly owned three more properties around town. Not bad for a farm laborer. Tom Nissen had an older brother who was a biker. He introduced Teena Brandon to a biker friend of his father, this was a grown man with a felony assault conviction about a decade older than Tom Nissen. This man either recognized Teena as a female or he had something on her, because he started screaming at Teena and left in a huff, promising to beat up Tom Nissen. Tom Nissen was so scared, that he didn’t go to the bar with the rest of his guests, until his biker brother arrived and they went in together, lest that biker see Tom and beat him up. You understand, that it wasn’t about Tom’s brother physically protecting him, but that Tom Nissen could not strike a gang member in self defense, you punch a gang member, you are dealing with the whole gang. If Tom Nissen’s biker brother was in the same club as the biker who threatened Nissen, then his brother could protect him. This is social status in criminal underworld. Nissen knew that Teena was a girl and he let her and Lana stay at his house when Teena got kicked out of Tisdel’s house for stealing. Teena’s sister spoke to Tom Nissen on the phone and told him (lied) that Teena was scheduled for a sex change surgery after which, she will be just like a man. Both Lana Tisdel and Tom Nissen knew that Teena was a girl before anybody else. Teena and Nissen appeared at the Oasis karaoke club in Falls City together, and they both went to visit the Tisdels. Lana Tisdel’s mom said that Tom Nissen is a friend of the family, and she was sheltering Michelle Lotter’s boyfriend, wanted on the assault warrant. Michelle Lotter is John Lotter’s sister. When Tom Nissen went to Falls City Police to try to have Teena’s bail revoked, he asked the police if it will be okay to have Teena tied up in his bedroom until she could be taken back into custody. This coming from a rapist is an obvious red flag. Another thing to keep in mind is that when Nissen and Lotter beat Teena they were hitting and kicking her in the belly, you should do your own research into what this means, but this is a hallmark of violence against women and indicates beater’s utter contempt for the woman, and of another thing, I will not get into here. To make a long story short, I believe that Teena Brandon wanted to be an outlaw in the real world and that she tried joining a company of real world criminals. That was a boys only club and she was rebuked. Teena Brandon was running away from being the lowest rung of the underworld society. Tom Nissen was in the same position when he served his time in prison. That commonality brought them close together, and Nissen drove Teena around to her Court hearings, etc. In his naivete he may have even introduced her to the biker he knew, because Teena may have wanted to join the biker’s gang. I believe that Teena acted more violent and tougher than Nissen, and intimidated him for a time. Nissen was scared by prison. By his own admission, Nissen beat and raped Teena to show her who was the boss. This was some kind of the real or imagined underworld, and Nissen and Lotter fully expected Teena to keep quiet and to be able to beat and rape her with impunity, and to possibly turn her out as a prostitute, whether she stayed in Falls City or went to Lincoln or to Omaha. The fact that Nissen and Lotter promised to kill her if she talked and Teena believed it, leads me to believe that there was nexus to some kind of an organized criminal structure, the fact that to this day nobody wants to talk about this, only reinforces it. Teena did not got to police on her own. 80% of all American women who are physically beaten, are also raped. So much so, that American ER staff speak to every female assault victim to see of she was also raped. When they asked her, Teena freaked out, and eventually agreed. When they murdered her, they did it because Teena went to authorities. Adults, namely Linda Gutierrez, acted on camera, like the two were crazy kids and she was the adult in the room. Except on that day, before the Christmas party at Tom Nissen’s house, Linda Gutierrez, a forty something, asked Teena Brandon, a 20 year old severely traumatized psychiatric patient, to take her pants off to see what she has between her legs. Teena was going to do it, but at the last moment she froze in fear and closed her eyes shut. Lana’s mom howled in rage and shoved Teena off her feet and into a large piece of furniture.
Excellent intelligence on the buildup to the rape and murder, BB. It makes sense that someone spurred Brandon to report the sexual assault — it’s hard to go to authorities about sex crimes. The officer who took Brandon’s complaint demonstrated why.
The person, who took Teena Brandon’s complaint was not a mere officer, he was a County Sheriff, and he was not the person who took the initial complaint. The first to respond to the scene was the Falls City PD. They took the rape kit and they interviewed all parties involved. The case ended up on Sheriff’s lap, because the rape occurred outside town, outside Falls City PD jurisdiction. Falls City PD were willing to arrest Nissen and Lotter for the beating that they subjected Teena after the Christmas party at Tom Nissen’s house, but Teena repeatedly refused to place charges. According to the statement she gave police, Teena had a problem getting raped, but nor getting beaten up. Had Teena been willing to have the two arrested, she would have survived Falls City.
Sheriff Laux had destroyed his professional reputation by the way he interviewed Teena. This was explored in great detail during Teena Brandon’s wrongful death suit. Other members of law enforcement have condemned Laux’s handling of the case in the strongest possible terms. It was callous how he treated Teena, but then there was testimony by a female DA prosecuting sex crimes and by an investigator of sex, both of whom said that interviews of rape victims may appear hard towards the victims or callous, but that is of necessity, so as to get certain information from the victim and to ascertain if the victim can take the stand against the rapist, and be cross examined by the defense, which will be even more cruel and demeaning. They went on to say that Teena’s interview was not unusually callous.
It needs to be said here, that Laux was well trained as an investigator, and he was able to find the location where Teena was raped and secure sufficient evidence to convict the two of the rape. This is not as easy as it sounds. Everyone assumes that Teena was raped at the industrial location in the Southeastern part of Falls City. Those are photos of the alleged rape scene posted on social media. That is wrong. What Nissen and Lotter did, was to take Teena on the night ride into the winter fields and drive around the muddy roads until they got to a location where they raped her. Laux worked with Teena to trace the route through Nebraska countryside and to the location where she was raped.
The further you get away from the event, the more information gets distorted. Wrongful death lawsuit documents claim that Teena Brandon cancelled the subsequent rape investigation appointment, because of the way Sheriff Laux was crude to her. There is also a statement that Teena Brandon made to police, where she claimed that “they” (friends of Nissen and Lotter) where watching the building and that she did not go inside. If you ever go to Falls City, you will notice that you can see the Courthouse building from Tom Nissen’s house. Teena was very scared, beyond that I am not willing to speculate why she missed that appointment.
Another point of divergence is how Lotter and Nissen found out that Teena talked to police about the rape. Same court documents claim that Nissen and Lotter found out after police interviewed them about the rape. Teena Brandon’s rape was addressed during the murder trial, and in it, there is testimony Teena Brandon told one of the women that she was raped (not Lana), and that woman told everyone.
Finally, the last thing to consider is the phone call that Tena’s sister placed to Nebraska State Police after the rape and before the murder. She called the police from Lincoln and made a police report, in it she expressed fear for Teena Brandon’s life. She told the police that she was making an arrangement to place Teena into a shelter for raped and battered women and that a shelter staff told her that they knew Tom Nissen, because they had Tom Nissen’s rape victims in the shelter. That information scared Teena’s sister enough to call the State Police from her home.
Based on the Court documents I have seen. Sheriff Laux was attempting to prosecute Tom Nissen for rape, but the rape victim had changed her mind and refused to cooperate after she agreed to press charges and the District Attorney’s office was involved. Tom Nissen may have had another victim, among local girls, who refused to press charges.
Linda,as far as I understand this, played the BIGGEST part in Brandon’s murder.She was a lax,ignorant drunk who helped those animals take out their revenge. She let these dudes rule her OWN HOME? WTH????? Then they come back and she chastises them for raping Brandon and has not a clue that these guys are psychopaths? She pretty much provoked it. Was this woman so booze-soaked she didn’t realize these guys were evil? This woman should have gone to prison with them. I hope she, too, rots in hell.
YES YES YES!!!!
But it is more involved.
I don’t think that Linda Gutierrez, Lana Tisdel’s mother, was a lax and ignorant drunk. Worse, she was a part of the local criminal underworld, and her house was a shelter of sorts. People on the run can crash there, I am not if she charged them rent or anything. John Lotter’s sister, Michelle Lotter, wo later came out as a lesbian woman, was friends or in love with a black young man from Kansas, who was wanted on assault charges, and Linda was hiding him in her house. Later during the trial, she had to dance circles to explain to the judge why she lied to State Police Detectives. Teena Brandon walked into Linda’s house and was kicked out only when the other people caught her stealing. Same reason that Lisa Lambert kicked Teena out of her house.
Linda Gutierrez had four children by four different men and was collecting child support from all of them. Lana Tisdel’s father, Leland Tisdel, listed his employment as a farm laborer, and himself lived in a tiny shack, but he owned several larger homes in Falls City. Linda Gutierrez acted a responsible adult for the police, but did everything she could to help John Lotter and Tom Nissen get rid of forensic evidence after they raped Teena Brandon. Worse yet, she gave them the location, where Teena was hiding out, but it wasn’t her who was looking for Teena from December 28, when they found out that Teena reported the rape, until the night she was murdered. If call Lotter and Nissen as part of the “Rough Crowd” in Falls City, then Michelle Lotter, Lana Tisdel’s half sister, and a couple of others, were the female parts of the “rough crowd”, and these girls were on record visiting all the acquaintances and Lisa Lambert’s distant relatives, canvassing to find out where Teena was hiding, once they found out that Teena was staying with Lisa Lambert, Linda Gutierrez told John Lotter and Tom Nissen, where Lisa Lambert’s house was. With all this, it makes one wonder, why Linda Gutierrez (now dead) was not charged as an accessory to triple homicide. To this day, members of the Falls City’s “Rough Crowd” want John Lotter (aka “the kid” off the death row, and they keep insisting that they were not the only ones guilty).
If you watch Brandon Teena Story documentary, there are two interesting moments, which the incompetent film makers failed to spot light. In one, you have Teena Brandon’s cousin, Maurice Adair twirling his glass of beer and acting guilty, when he tells us how Teena would help him out. What he fails to tell us is that while they needed help, Teena did whatever it took to feed them and financially support them in Omaha, but once the damage took its effect and Teena started acting out, they kicked her back to her mother’s trailer in Lincoln — how dare she bring violence to their beautiful home in Omaha! It really happened. Adair tells so to some researchers from Germany — she brought violence to their home. Another noteworthy moment in the Brandon Teena story is Linda Gutierrez showing classic signs of lying on camera. She says — I told her, Bradon, no one deserves to get raped.. well, not get raped. But hold on, what is wrong with telling a 20-year-old woman who was just raped that no one deserves to get raped, esp when Teena was crying and she practically never cried? What kind of a person would NOT comfort a young woman who was raped? Why would Linda lie about this? To ingratiate herself to the camera? Well, here we are.
If you follow everything that was said, you will see, that Linda Gutierrez had ties with the Lotter family and was sheltering a wanted person as a favor to them. At the same time, Tom Nissen, a thief and a sex offender out on parole, who has three kids and owns a home on Stone Street right behind the town square, he spends time ingratiating himself to Linda Gutierrez. Why? What status does she have for a younger guy to be spending time in her company? Incidentally, Tom Nissen is the one who brings Teena Brandon to The Oasis around Tanksgiving 1993 and introduces her to the locals, including John Lotter and Lana Tisdel. Teena Brandon spends the next two weeks finding out where Lana lives and just goes inside Linda’s house and says hello to her. Rough crowd has its privileges.
There is only one, ONE, possibly redeeming quality to Linda — she was keeping her kids safe from the local criminals. To hear Lana say it, Linda Gutierrez was pretty strict as a parent. She kept her kids in the “children’s basement” out of the reach of the local street hoodlums. There is a photo of Linda Gutierrez taken shortly before her death with her grown kids at Leland Tisdel’s funeral. Linda is old, obese, bent. But she has a half hidden triumphant smile. Why is she smiling? Did she triumph over her ex-husband or did she triumph over the local thugs and keep Lana out of their clutches? Did she beat the system?
Does anyone know where I can watch the Maury Povich & Current Affair shows about the Teena Brandon case?
Hi, Linda. I searched online for that episode, but no luck.
You need to contact the show’s producers and purchase the episode from them. It should be around $30 USD, but it might be on VHS.
i tried to contact the people who are part of the cast of the story of Brandon Teena … but to no avail …
What do you need?
https://www.wibw.com/2020/08/31/nebraska-man-killed-late-saturday-in-head-on-crash-in-brown-county/
Is this the same lana tisdel?
Killed a man from Nebraska in a head on collision. What a weird coincidence if it is.
How sad — hope she recovers! Thanks much for sending me the link. I just updated the blog post with the information.
Brandon wanted to be accepted & loved for who he claimed to be, a man. He went to the wrong town (Falls City) & ran with the wrong crowd. They all set Brandon up. Lotter & Nissan told Brandon that if he went to the police about the rape that they wound silence him permanently. And that’s what they did. Falls City is one track minded ppl. If you ain’t one of them? Don’t go. GOD bless the victims.
Have you ever been to Falls City, NE? Today it’s the Rainbow Capital of small town America, even though 99% of the people had nothing to do with it. Teena Brandon blew into town wearing a jacket with a stylized patch on her back from a power utility that made her look like a gang member. Teena drove into town in Lisa Lambert’s green Mercury Cougar, a luxury sports coupe, that she passed as her own. Lisa Lambert worked two jobs – nursing and bartending to pay rent in a small house she lived in. The rough crowd that Brandon was warned about also worked, especially – women. Girls used to work in ice cream shops and convenience stores, while John Lotter’s common law wife babysat for Tom Nissen’s wife. There was a paid help relationship between the two. Even John Lotter had a job in Kansas. Only ones unemployed were Brandon and Nissen.
Is this the way to live as a man? To be a gang member in a criminal underworld, where the mensch hold no job and women have no option of saying *** NO *** to “made men”? Why didn’t Teena stay with Lisa, helped her raise an infant, and maybe find a job pumping gas in Humboldt, NE, just a 15 minute walk from Lisa’s house?
Teena wrote a famous poem: Changes I am going through in my life will change me forever. Soon I’ll have anybody I want, and I’ll give them the love that I have. Everyone assumes that this was Teena’s commitment to becoming trans-male, but it also reflects her commitment to becoming a career criminal, where you can have anybody you want from among the women part of the criminal underworld. Teena was going from a person who habitually forged signature on bank checks to being a member of the rough crowd in Falls City, where young women such as Lana Tisdel’s half sister were playing a support role to local men serving prison time for burglary. I think that not enough time was spent on Teena Brandon’s family, or Lana Tisdel’s lineage or Leland Tisdel, Lana’s father or her half sister who was kept out of the story altogether and you won’t find her photo. If that coverage was made public, particularly men with whom Teena’s mother associated, then Teena’s life choices would seem a lot more clearer, but becoming a real world gang member is not what most people see as a worthy masculine lifestyle.
To me. Teena Brandon from another time and place, saddled with demons few know about, and treated like dirt by the people cared for most – including the love of her life, Gina Bartu, who utterly rejected her, with extreme prejudice, because Teena was marginalized and emotionally unstable to a point where she did not care if they lived in the open as a lesbian man and wife, man and wife arrangement was part of the unacceptable arrangement to Bartu, it seems. What happened to Teena were the brutal and tragic consequences of her life choices, but the courts gave her opportunity – NINE times the judge refused to lock her up based on Teeena’s promise to study for the GED High School Diploma, which would have opened her the doors into the U.S. military, but Teena Brandon either refused or was unable to study or was unwilling to comply with courts, in the true outlaw fashion. To add insult to injury, Colorado Art Institute, where Teena Brandon was hoping to study towards becoming a commercial artist, was a for-profit commercial school, which has since then closed its doors, as a result of the scandal that engulfed private for profit commercial colleges.
Brandon Teena’s social media page was claiming Lana Tisdel now Buchman since married Josh Buchman, in 2001 and have kids together, claimed Lana Buchman being in a car accident and getting hurt so bad along with the other guy that she had died from her injuries June 1, 2021 and see that written nowhere now. I saw that Lana was in a bad accident where she had rolled her car and being under the influence of pills and her lawyer using her incident to advertise his services. I take it she’s still alive and confused her being dead from the other guy she got in an accident with that died from his injuries from her old town of Falls Cedar.
Lana Bachman works as a maid at a casino in Kansas. Josh Bachman is a lawyer, if I am not mistaken. Lana has a daughter with whom she has a very close relationship and the young woman totally adores her mother. Alas, both Lana’s daughter and Teena Brandon’s niece are both young women single mothers, and each gave their son a name fit for a king.
I am curious how you know so much about this story. Trial transcripts, diaries or books, perhaps? When you speak of “criminal underworld” are you talking about organized crime? In a rural area of the middle of nowhere SE Nebraska, who are they shaking down to finance their enterprise? What aspiring mafioso or gang member, you have suggested, in Brandon goes to an area like that? I don’t understand. Regarding the recently paroled convict Nissen (at the time), you say he had no employment but supported 3 kids while living in a pricey house in a pricy area. How do you explain that? You also talked extensively about the bail situation. So there wasn’t a bondsman involved I take it. I don’t understand, either, how a simple $2500 bond could involve a house and property as collateral. Another head scratcher to your enormous knowledge about this situation is how all these intense relationships took place in just over five weeks. If true, that’s a lot of life you are suggesting inside such a short time. Lastly, I’m curious about Brandon’s sex. In the movie he identified as hermaphrodite but only had female genitals. That’s not intersex by definition. He was transgender. Why was he telling Lana he had both female and male body parts when apparently he didn’t or did he?