Editor's note: This is an ongoing news story, return back to this article for more updates.
For two months, Mia Larotonda has been fighting a legal battle to have her Transgender fiancé’s burial rites honored in accordance with her gender identity.
On July 9, Ms. Indigo Greene, aka Alice Alexandra Greene, was reportedly found by Larotonda in their Seattle home after taking her own life, responding alongside units from Seattle Police Department (SPD) and the King County Medical Examiner (KCME). Greene was cofounder of Impact Foundation, a non-profit created in 2022 dedicated to Seattle’s underground LGBTQ+ music and arts. She was also known for being a compassionate, dedicated member of the local Queer Mutual Aid scene.
Larotonda, a Latina Seattle native and Trans woman herself, is a show promoter with Impact Foundation, a social media coordinator for Seattle Voice Labs, and an all-around active member in the Trans community in Seattle. She described to the SGN how Greene was an important pillar in her life, as well as the local Trans community: “We shared all the same friends. We went to all the same places. She was one of the reasons why I work at Impact now, and was a hugely important part of the community. She was an expected face to see at a lot of things.”
Recounting her fiancé’s work and impact on people’s lives further, she states, “She would lock in when it came to taking care of someone else. The two of us we fed, we clothed, we gave beds to people. We did some work with Traction PNW and other projects in the area to house Queer people in need.”
Submitted to the SGN by Larotonda, in her final moments Greene left behind a note reading, “I’m sorry I’m giving up. I know you said not to. Every moment in my life is pain. Everything I am belongs to my wife Mia. Take care of my remains.”
According to Larotonda, Greene wanted to be laid to rest either through green burial or gemification.
Legal disputes
Despite the final wishes left by Greene, her remains were slated by the KCME to be released to her biological family in Alabama. Larotonda reports feeling horrified by this, as she stated both Greene’s mother and father had long been estranged from her life, supposedly complicit in her abusive childhood. She described to the SGN having to frantically try to obtain the family's contact info in the first week of Greene’s passing.
Eventually, Larotonda made contact with Greene’s mother, Michele Merchant Blackburn. She reports to have pleaded with the mother to honor her fiancé’s final rites, sharing the note via text message.
Blackburn later responded to Larotonda, referring to Greene using her deadname and masculine pronouns, stating her child “will be coming home whole to his family and his life will be celebrated privately here.”
Highlighting the injustice of being stripped of her Transgender identity by family, Larotonda points out that, “They want to bury her in more ways than one — pulling her out of her community, her loved ones. Only using her old name, only using her old pronouns,”
As Greene’s surviving romantic partner deeply upset by these circumstances, she professed, “they can just swoop in, disregard what her last wish was, and then take her away and hide her. I think that’s the worst part. They think that a Trans suicide is something that’s shameful. So better to remember her as an unhappy man than as a traumatized Trans person that was deliberately abused.”
Larotonda has since challenged the family’s claim over Greene’s remains in court. She was initially granted a temporary restraining order filed on July 17. Although Greene’s note did not qualify as a legally bidding will according to WA state law, because it was not an advanced directive signed and dated with two witnesses, the restraining order still succeeded as under the Revised Code of Washington Queer people cannot be misrepresented in their name, gender and pronouns in legal documents.
For a hearing on July 21, representation of Greene’s family was required in court for the restraining order's expiration. Larotonda claimed to have sent two friends, Julia Skillman and Victoria Gold, to deliver the necessary legal papers to Greene’s family residence in Alabama on July 20.
According to both Larotonda and an incident report filed by the local county sheriff’s office in Alabama given to the SGN, Greene’s father Arter Jack Blackburn had allegedly pushed Gold to the ground thinking she was Larotonda, while also slapping a cellphone from her hand while trying to deliver the papers.
In the report filed by Officer Drobles present on the scene, he wrote “Arter stated that the ‘thing’ in the passenger seat of the U-Haul is claiming to be their son’s Transgender lover.”
The officer further writes of the father, “Arter stated 'these people’ turned their son into a Transgender and a drug addict, ultimately leading to his death.”
Despite these events, a judge in the Superior Court of Washington and King County ultimately ruled in favor of the Blackburn family, arguing that Larotonda was not Greene’s legal next of kin. But Larotonda is still determined, looking to pursue further legal action in the Washington Supreme Court to not only change the law for her fiancé’s sake, but for the sake of all Trans people after death in the state of Washington.
A GoFundMe page has been established by Mia Larotonda to raise funds for legal costs and a memorial service for Indigo Greene; and can be found at https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-us-honor-indigos-final-wishes-and-fight-unfair-laws
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