Twenty-five years after the murder of Fred Martinez Jr. in Cortez, former Cortez Journal managing editor Gail Binkly says the case remains a reminder of the importance and difficulty of local reporting.
Martinez was 16, Navajo and Two Spirit. They were killed near Cortez in June 2001, and their death drew national attention as advocates, journalists and community members examined the role anti-LGBTQ bias played in the case.
Binkly, who now reports for KSJD, was managing editor of The Cortez Journal at the time. In an interview with KSJD, she said the case did not immediately appear to be a national story. That changed when local reporters learned the victim was a Cortez teenager and that Martinez’s identity may have been central to understanding what happened.
“Our lead reporter on this, Aspen Emmett, went over to the school and started asking people about him,” Binkly said. “That was when it came out very quickly that he was what we will call Two Spirit for the moment. He had been hassled over this, and so she reported on this, although she did not make it the main point of her story. It was quickly picked up then by the Associated Press, and it became a big story.”
Binkly said the newsroom had to decide how to report on Martinez’s identity at a time when many of the terms now used in LGBTQ and Two Spirit coverage were not common in local journalism.
She said there was also immediate reaction from readers.
“There were people that said that this was a tragedy, but we really shouldn’t have mentioned it, because everyone has flaws,” Binkly said. “Ultimately we wound up writing an editorial that said, you know, we don’t think this is a flaw.”
Binkly said the local environment in 2001 was very different from today’s public conversations around gender and sexuality. Same-sex marriage was not yet legal nationwide, and she said there was more open pushback against LGBTQ people than many listeners might expect now.
But she said there were also community members and outside advocates who pushed for Martinez’s death to be understood in the context of anti-LGBTQ violence.
Binkly said the Journal’s coverage was later recognized as forward-looking for the time. She credited reporters Aspen Emmett, Katherine Heidelberg and Jim Mimiaga with covering a difficult story carefully.
Still, she said some of the language would likely be handled differently today.
“There are things I wouldn’t necessarily say were wrong, but they would be different now,” Binkly said. “We struggled with, did we call Fred gay, did we call him transgender, did we call him Two-Spirited? There was no discussion at the time, because people weren’t doing it, of using a gender-neutral term like ‘they.’ It was just ‘he.’ Those are all things that we would, I think, be more careful about.”
KSJD had planned to mark the anniversary with a screening of the documentary Two Spirits at the Sunflower Theatre. The station cancelled the event after learning Martinez’s mother did not want the film shown.
Binkly said the decision to cancel the screening was about respecting that boundary. But she said the anniversary still offers a chance to reflect on Martinez’s life, the impact of the case and what local reporting made visible.
“I think people just see that there’s still a real difficulty for many people to accept the LGBTQ community, and a lot of misguided antipathy toward them,” Binkly said. “They felt like this would be a time to come together and kind of commemorate his life and talk about some of these issues.”
For Binkly, the case also remains an example of why local reporting matters.
“I don’t know that this would have even come out about him being Two Spirit if it had not been for the local reporting,” she said.
