Net Romance Ends In Killing, Revelation Groom Was Woman

[The Straight Story]

Net Romance Ends In Killing, Revelation Groom Was Woman

UPDATED: 12:12 PM EST November 24, 2004
ROCHESTER, N.Y. -- An eight-month Internet romance led to a quickly arranged marriage, then to the bride's sudden death a month later.


Doctors at first suspected Linda Lou White, who weighed 350 pounds and was in poor health, had died of natural causes. But her mother, reached by an upstate New York hospital at her home in Memphis, Tenn., was immediately suspicious, authorities said Tuesday.

"Did he kill her?" she asked over the phone.

Sheriff's deputies began investigating, and the groom, Craig Musso, 44, was charged last week with murder. An autopsy revealed his 43-year-old wife had been strangled.

Then came another twist: It turned out Musso once was a woman.

While confirming Musso is transgender -- he was pictured in a 1978 high school yearbook as Wendy Musso -- authorities said privacy laws bar them from discussing what medical procedures, if any, Musso underwent to live as a man.

The couple met through an online chat room and, after their friendship blossomed, Musso took a bus to Memphis last month. They were married a day or two later, then went directly to Musso's home in Ontario, a rural town 20 miles east of Rochester, Sheriff Richard Pisciotti said.

On Nov. 12, deputies found White unresponsive in the couple's bathroom, and she was pronounced dead at a Rochester hospital.

Her mother's conversation with a hospital social worker later "sparked our suspicion that something was abnormal" and an autopsy was ordered, the Wayne County sheriff said.

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[The Straight Story]

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