Sativa Transue
May 19, 1995-November 27, 2021
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On November 27, 2021, 26-year-old Sativa Transue was found beaten and strangled to death in her Cancun hotel room in Mexico while on vacation with her boyfriend of 3 years. He was later arrested for her murder. This is her story.
Sativa Nichelle Transue was born in Spokane, WA, on May 19, 1995. Her mother was young when she had her, so they grew up together in a way and were extremely close.
She was raised in the nearby town of Cheney. Although Cheney is a small town, it's also a college town and home of Eastern Washington State University, which sits in the middle of town.
Her parents were married but eventually got divorced. Sativa had _____ siblings (although Im unsure how many). As a child, she was always go-go-go; she loved to be outside, going on adventures and moving around. You could often find her hiking, boating, or snowboarding. Unsurprisingly she was very athletic and played softball, basketball, and volleyball. In 2013, Sativa graduated from Cheney High School. People describe her as "a vibrant person with a contagiously bright personality."
Sativa's friends said it didn't matter what they were doing; if they were with Sativa, they were having fun. Everyone says she was a kind, bubbly person who didn't have a mean bone in her body.
After she graduated High school, she got accepted into Eastern Washington University, where she graduated in 2017 with a degree in exercise science. Her goal was to further her education and become a massage therapist. Sativa had two animals, an emotional support dog named Shadow and a cat named Flower.
While living in Cheney, Sativa got a job at a company called Lucid after graduation. Her boss recalls Sativa as being an excellent employee. There are pictures of her and her coworkers on her Facebook, and she seems really happy.
Her boss also recalls a time when she asked a fellow employee, Taylor Allen, to help assemble a desk for Sativa. He complied, but during the process, his boss witnessed him get so frustrated and upset that he actually took a mallet and smashed it all to pieces. His boss had to leave the room because of the flying debris. I'm pretty sure he stayed employed by the business. Either way, Sativa and Taylor hit it off, and eventually, the pair started dating. It was Facebook official by November 10, 2018.
What I don't think Sativa knew was that he had a violent history, something that we look for on this channel when talking about domestic violence. Just to ensure everyone is on the same page, domestic violence homicides share a similar pattern of events, so much so that criminologist Jane Monkton Smith has categorized these patterns into 8 stages. Stage 1 is a history of domestic abuse or stalking. In this case, I don't know the details of the assault, but it happened in 2012 and solidified that he had a violent history.
It's unclear if the relationship developed quickly or at a typical rate. A relationship that develops rapidly reflects stage 2 of domestic violence homicides. But we know that he got jealous and controlling soon into the relationship and began isolating Sativa from people who didn't like him or the males he was threatened by.
Eventually, he started isolating her from her friends and family in general, and about 6 months into the relationship, the family noticed a difference in Sativa and knew something was wrong. For one thing, Sativa used to go home to celebrate holidays and birthdays with her family. But after a while, she stopped coming to see her family. They began to notice that on the rare occasion, she did attend a celebration, there seemed to be "consequence or punishment" for her. For example, after she visited her family, he would disappear, with no contact, for days, sometimes taking her dog with him.
I'm unsure if Sativa told them or if they just picked up on it, but her family discovered that Taylor was monitoring her phone. He had connected it to his computer, so he saw it every time she got a message. This behavior would coincide with stage 3 of domestic violence homicides, where coercive control dominates the relationship. Coercive control is a pattern of behaviors that a perpetrator uses to create an unequal power dynamic to gain power and control in the relationship. They do this by breaking down the victim's self-esteem and independence. Some examples of coercive controlling behavior are monitoring activities, exerting financial control, isolating the victim, insulting, threatening, and intimidating the victim, and involving animals or children to control their partners.
Sativa was offered a work opportunity in western Washington in the Seattle area in Milton, WA. She was sad to leave her family but ecstatic and thrilled for the chance to grow as a person.
Sativa told her sister that in _________, Taylor started using cocaine and ecstasy and was drinking heavily. When he got drunk, he became angry, mean, and even violent, punching holes in walls and breaking things. Sativa knew this wasn't okay, but she nicknamed this behavior "Tee's Beast" to cope with it.
Using drugs increases the lethality or danger risk in relationships (by __________%) significantly. This includes alcohol. In fact, alcohol alone increases the lethality risk in domestic violence relationships by ________ %.
In August 2021, Sativa's sister visited the couple and stayed with them for a week. Taylor was hardly around. He was always off taking work calls or at the gym. Her sister remembers there being holes in the walls and items broken around their place, but Sativa had an explanation for them.
Many believe the relationship wasn't going well, and Sativa had plans to break things off. She hadn't seen her family for a while and, by all appearances, seemed excited to go to Spokane and visit them for the holidays.
But her boyfriend didn't want to go and didn't want her to go either. Leaving the relationship or going to her family would have threatened his ability to control her, and this reflects stage 4 of domestic violence homicides, a trigger.
He wanted to stop her from seeing her family so bad that he offered to take her to Mexico for a last-minute getaway. He arranged for them to stay at the All Ritmo Resort, with a beautiful 200/night room on the 4th floor in Cancun, Mexico. An offer she could hardly refuse. The only downside was that she had to leave Shadow with Taylor's mom, a woman she didn't trust. But she decided to go, she had gone once before and loved it there. Sativa called her family on Thursday the 25th to let them know she wasn't coming to Spokane, and she and Taylor were heading to Cancun.
The trip was rocky from the start. The couple argued before they even got on the plane. But Sativa sent messages to her family and friends saying it was beautiful and she was loving the sunshine. She told them they were arguing, but overall, things were going okay, and she was enjoying herself. She sent her mom a picture of a view from the hotel room.
On Friday the 26th, the couple went to dinner at a restaurant in the hotel, and everything seemed normal between them. They returned to their room and then the hotel bar, where the couple got heavily intoxicated. Witnesses saw Taylor kissing another woman and an upset Sativa pulling him away.
Security got involved and asked him to leave. He started acting so irrationally that security had to escort him to his room. While they were walking to the room, he continued his behavior and started running and jumping over fences and chairs. He was 250 lbs; security struggled to control him but eventually got him to his room, where they left him alone with 140lb Sativa. They told her not to let him leave and walked out the door.
Sativa was entering stage 5 of domestic violence homicides, with a clear escalation of intensity of controlling tactics and behavior. It wasn't long before someone at the hotel reported screaming coming from her room. When staff arrived, Sativa had a deep 1 1/2-inch laceration across her chin. The hotel staff called a doctor, and she was given stitches on-site. At some point, Sativa even called the Mexican police to report the assault. She was clearly scared.
While this was happening, hotel staff went looking for Taylor. They found him heavily intoxicated, threatening to jump from the 4th floor. The staff spent over 3 hours talking him down, refusing to get law enforcement involved claiming they had everything under control.
They eventually got him inside the building and back in a room with Sativa. While he was in the room, they asked her if her boyfriend had any involvement in her injury or if she wanted a separate room. She declined. This is an excellent time to remind people to remove the perpetrator from the room when talking with a victim, ALWAYS!
At some point throughout this time, Sativa texted her friends and told them the couple had argued, she had to get stitches, and Taylor was fighting with security. They got scared for her.
They put the couple in a room on the first floor so Taylor couldn't jump off the building from his 4th story room. The hotel staff remembers Sativa helping him pack and trying to console him throughout this process. The staff saw them in their new room and left.
That night people heard screams coming from their first-floor hotel room, but not a single person intervened or called for help.
But when Sativa went radio silent, her friends grew very concerned. They began sending messages to Sativa's family, expressing they thought something was wrong, and eventually, they called the police. Everyone's worst fears were confirmed when the Mexican consulate called Sativa's mother around 9am Saturday.
That morning, Saturday the 27th, a freshly showered Taylor walked up to the desk while texting, not taking his eyes off the phone, and said, "My wife is unconscious."
Hotel staff found Sativa lying face down on the floor with her purse around her shoulder. People suspect she was trying to leave. Upon deeper inspection, there was only $17 in her purse leading many to believe she was also experiencing financial abuse at the time of her death.
It was clear she had fought for her life; several pieces of her jewelry were ripped out, and she had a black eye and bruising to her nose, cheeks, and most of her body. She also had that large laceration and stitches to her chin. There were marks on her hands and ankles, indicating she was being restrained around the time of her death, as well as signs of defending herself. As if this beating wasn't brutal enough, Taylor went on to strangle Sativa, which was ultimately her cause of death, along with multiple contusions. There are some indications that he called his mother after the attack. But I'm not entirely sure, so I don't feel comfortable getting into all of that.
It's unclear where, but he was arrested as a probable participant in femicide. Femicide is not a term or charge we have in the united states but is his mugshot shows him in a bathrobe. But allowed to fly back to the United States, and on December 2, he was arrested by Spokane police.
I don't think we will ever know if this murder was planned or happened in the moment or if he ever stopped and realized what he was doing before he decided to continue the fatal attack. What we know is that as it relates to the stages of domestic violence homicide, stages 6, 7, and 8 occurred in those hotel rooms that evening.
Sativa's family is still in the process of fighting for justice. They had to hire an attorney in Mexico to get her body released back to the family in the united states. At first, his attorneys tried to keep her body there, but on (Friday, December 9) she was returned to her family in Washintgon and (buried).
This has been an extremely challenging, painful, and costly process for Sativa's family. They set up a gofundme account to help with the costs. I will link the gofundme below. (You can also find the information on the website in the channel's description box, along with information about every other victim we've covered on this channel.)
And at home, it was no better. After Sativa's death, her mother changed the locks on the apartment, as she was the only other person on the lease. But for some reason, Taylor's mom tried desperately to get into the apartment, to the point of calling the leasing office (over 100 times in one business day) demanding to be let in. The next day Sativa's family found that someone had kicked in the apartment door and had stolen items. These are very specific items, but I don't want to get into all of that.
And as if this isn't terrible enough, Taylor's mom has never returned Shadow, Sativa's emotional support dog.
The most recent update is that Taylor is in prison on homicide or femicide charges in Cancun and has joined the cartel. He will hopefully get the maximum sentence, but either way, his memory will disappear into the darkness of the prison system, never to be thought about again.
His mother still needs to return Shadow to Sativa's family.
Today I'm sharing Sativa's story in hopes that it might inspire someone in a violent or toxic relationship to get out and get support.
And to remind Taylor's mom and the Washington State Police that Sativa's dog, her baby is in the hands of her murderer's family. WSP, please do something; your inaction is hurting the family. How can this be okay? Do the right thing, Rosa, and return Shadow.
We will continue to support Sativa's family, and we will not remember Sativa for what happened to her but for who she was as a beautiful, kind, bubbly, fun, loving, and caring person. She was a light in the lives of everyone she loved and to those of us to hear her story. We will remember her laugh, a laugh funnier than what was being laughed at, and her contagious love for adventure and peace.
If you find it in your heart, please light a candle for Sativa or for anyone else who has lost their life at the hands of domestic violence. And if you or anyone you know is experiencing domestic violence, please reach out to someone in your support network or a local resource and let them know what is going on. Explore safety plans; there are even some on this page. So many people are out there waiting for you, waiting to help you.
As always, please stay safe out there, and ill see you in the next video.
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