Friends of Fern Feather this week remembered the Vermonter as a healer, a plant and animal lover, a warm person who danced through the world building connections and community.
“You’d never even see her without a smile on her face,” said Michele Wildflower, of Westmore, who first met Feather more than a decade ago. “You couldn’t be with her and not feel good.”
But as they grappled with news that Feather, a transgender woman from Hinesburg, had been fatally stabbed in Morristown on Tuesday, they were joined by thousands of LGBTQ+ Vermonters across the state who were trying to process the 29-year-old’s violent death.
Leaders of LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations in the state — including the Pride Center of Vermont, a community center in Burlington, and Outright Vermont, which is geared toward LGBTQ+ youths — said they were providing resources for anyone grieving the loss, whether they knew Feather personally or not.
“When violence like this happens, it can cause a lot of unease and a lot of fear and anxiety,” said Mike Bensel, executive director of the Pride Center. “For trans and non-binary Vermonters, it’s times like these that people really need to come together and rally around and show their solidarity and support for this.”
Seth Brunell, 43, pleaded not guilty on Thursday to a second-degree murder charge in Feather’s death. Court documents indicate that the two had been spending time together after Feather picked up Brunell as a hitchhiker days earlier.
According to a police affidavit, Brunell claimed Feather had “attacked him” after making a sexual advance. Brunell showed no injuries nor “indications of an altercation,” police said.
Prosecutors have not said whether they believe Feather’s gender was a factor in the killing. Lamoille County State’s Attorney Todd Shove on Friday said law enforcement had identified additional people to interview and that his office would “move forward appropriately” if it found evidence to prosecute a hate crime.
Wildflower recalled first meeting Feather more than a decade ago at the Northeast Kingdom Music Festival and being immediately taken by Feather’s genuine warmth.
Feather showed all life forms love, including the littlest creatures like bugs, Wildflower said.
That extended to strangers. Damarah Barr-Smith, of Plainfield, recalls the first words Feather shared when they met at a bonfire: “You’re too pretty to be standing alone.”
“Everything about Fern just makes you feel so special,” Barr-Smith said, recalling how Feather also rescued birds and kept dogs and fish.
Barr-Smith said anyone Feather met — even if just for a second — would be handed a rock, a crystal, a hug, a kiss on the cheek. Feather was “constantly like this giver of love,” she said, recalling her friend’s love of greenery that matched their chosen name.
“Thousands of plants were hanging off the ceiling and down the stairs, plants that I have tried to make live for years, and were just thriving in (Feather’s) house, in the middle of the woods in Vermont, in the middle of winter,” she said.
When Wildflower first heard news of Feather’s death, she immediately thought of the LGBTQ+ community. Feather had written a public Facebook post in late March about identifying as a trans woman.
“She just came out,” Wildflower said. “What’s the message to our trans youth that you need to be aware because people hate you?”
(Friends said Feather used a mix of pronouns over their life and since announcing their transition publicly, and may have been using multiple pronouns at the time of their death.)
Cassidy Sargent, of Burlington, recalled meeting Feather for the first time at a bonfire. Sargent was having a rough day, and Feather made her feel heard and cared for, Sargent said.
“We ended up immediately bonding to the extent where we kind of closed ourselves off and just got really deep into life,” Sargent said. “She seemed to just have this really vibrant, loving, open-arms energy, which I really appreciated.”
Like Wildflower, Sargent fears that Feather was targeted due to their gender identity.
“Vermont is really painted as this beautiful, holistic, loving environment,” Sargent said, but “there are a lot of people in our state who struggle to see goodness in people like Fern, and that makes me really sad.”
Bensel, of the Pride Center, said Feather’s murder called to mind the death of Amos Beede, a transgender man who was murdered in Burlington in 2016.
They said Feather’s stabbing, combined with transphobic rhetoric by state legislatures, Fox News and Vermont’s GOP, have created a scary environment for trans and nonbinary individuals.
The “intersection of violence and identity” is an ongoing issue in Vermont, they said. Despite Vermont’s reputation as a progressive state, “we have a long way to go to create a state where this type of violence doesn’t happen,” they said.
Nationally, 2021 was the deadliest year for transgender and gender non-conforming people on record, according to Time, which cited a Human Rights Campaign report indicating at least 50 trans and gender non-conforming people were killed, a likely undercount.
Another study by Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law found that transgender people were more than four times more likely than their cisgender peers to be victims of violent crime.
In Vermont, Bensel sees a sharp divide between communities that are either affirming or unsafe for LGBTQ+ individuals.
“There’s definitely some progressive pockets,” they said, “and there’s communities that are, you know, rolling up their sleeves and investing in the work to make sure that their communities, their schools, their support networks are affirming to trans and non-binary folks. And then there’s communities that are very much unsafe.”
The Pride Center runs a SafeSpace Anti-Violence Program which includes a support line that people can contact by phone (802-863-0003) or online chat. Bensel said the “majority” of people who reach out to use the program are trans or gender-non-conforming.
While the response to Feather’s death has been one of immediate outrage, Dana Kaplan, the executive director of Outright Vermont, believes the organization’s youth members will continue to discuss it in the weeks after vigils have ended.
Outright is facilitating a virtual and in-person group to meet with LGBTQ+ teens on Friday and a meeting with youth organizers across the state this weekend.
Outright also has been hearing from gay-straight alliance educators across the state looking for advice on how to teach about Feather’s death. Kaplan sees it as “really important that we not hide the reality of what happened to young folks.”
Yet, despite the fear and anxiety of the moment, Kaplan said, “we’re not going to back down from doing the things that we know matter. We are going to stand by the work that we do. We’re going to stand by the celebration and joy of being in community with peers. We’re gonna celebrate our identities and that is just as important.”
Several vigils have been planned to honor Feather, including:
- In Essex Junction’s Five Corners, Rep. Rey Garofano, D-Essex, along with local organizers, has planned a rally on Saturday from 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m., in support of the transgender community within the state.
- The Pride Center is planning to hold a vigil on Saturday afternoon at 2 p.m. in Morrisville’s Oxbow Park.
- Feather’s friends are organizing a public celebration for the night of Friday, April 22 — what would be Feather’s 30th birthday — at Orlando’s in Burlington.
Correction: A photo caption in an earlier version of this story misstated the date of Fern Feather’s death.
