It was a crime so brutal and violent it led to one of the perpertrators locked up on death row with the other told he would spend the rest of his life behind bars.
The rape and murder of transexual man, Brandon Teena, inspired the hard-hitting and Oscar-winning film, Boys Don't Cry, starring Hilary Swank and Chloe Sevigny.
Brandon, born Teena Renae Brandon, was violently raped and then when he sought help from police and his attackers found out, was shot and stabbed to death.
It was a killing that shocked America and has led to increased lobbying for tougher penalties for hate crimes in the United States.
And now one of Brandon's rapists and killers claims to have fallen in love with a grandmother from Scotland - and is still protesting his innocence.
Brandon was just 21 when he was subjected to the harrowing assault. He had been living as a man since his teenage years and identified as male.
Brandon started binding his breasts when he was 18 and had relationships with woman.
Since he was a child, Brandon had led a troubled life. His father died in a car crash eight months before he was born and he was first raised by his mother, JoAnn, before he and his sister, Tammy, went to live with their grandparents.
When he was three he was returned to his mother but was then sexually abused by his uncle for several years when he was still a child.
It was while he was still at school that he realised he was a male and after graduating underwent several medical evaluations, where he was diagnosed as suffering from a "severe sexual identity crisis".
By the time he was 21, Brandon was identifying solely as a man and moved in with his 18-year-old girlfriend, Lana Tisdel, who was initially unaware he had been born female.
When he was arrested for forging cheques and jailed, she found out the truth as he was being held in the female section of the prison.
But Brandon told her he had been born both sexes and was waiting for gender surgery, so the pair remained a couple.
At a Christmas party in 1993 he was accosted by John Lotter and Marvin Tom Nissen, who forced him to removed his underwear while Brandon's girlfriend watched in horror.
The pair then attacked Brandon and forced him into a car before driving him to the meat-packing district of Lincoln, where they brutally gang-raped him and beat him.
Brandon was then driven back to Nissen's home, where he was forced to have a shower but managed to escape by climbing out of the bathroom window.
He fled to Lana's house and she talked him into going to the police, even though Nissen and Lotter had threatened to "silence him permanently" if he reported their vile attack.
But a series of blunders, including the rape test kit being lost and police quizzing Brandon so much about his sexuality he refused to answer their questions, meant Nissen and Lotter were never arrested.
On New Year's Eve, the two men who had assaulted Brandon broke into his house and demanded to know where he was from Lisa Lambert, who owned the home.
She bravely refused to tell them but after tearing the property apart, Nissen and Lotter found him hiding under a bed.
After demanding to know who else was home and being told Phillip DeVine was in the house, they shot and killed him, Lisa and Brandon in front of her son.
After being shot, Brandon twitched several times and Nissen stabbed him in the chest to make sure he was dead before the two men fled.
They were later arrested and charged with his murder. Nissen testified against Lotter and was jailed for life.
But Lotter was found guilty and sentenced to death. Despite several appeals, including after Nissen admitted he was the one who shot the three people, he has been on death row ever since.
Brandon's tragic story was made into the Oscar-winning film, Boys Don't Cry in 1999.
Hilary Swank played Brandon and won an Academy Award for her performance, which saw her research include living as a man for a month, binding her breasts and losing weight so she looked more like a man.
Chloe Sevigny played Lana and was also nominated for an Oscar.
Meanwhile, Lotter has never stopped fighting for his release and his appeals caught the attention of Michele German, from West Lothian, in Scotland.
Michele first started writing to the convicted triple killer in 2017 after first becoming aware of his case more than 20 years earlier.
After Lotter received her first letter to the Tecumsheh State Correctional Institution, he wrote back immediately.
The gran-of-four is totally convinced by his innocence and following his lung cancer diagnosis is fundraising so she can see him.
Michele says she would marry Lotter "in a heartbeat" and one day hopes his name will be cleared.
She told the Daily Record : "I didn’t know who he was or anything but there was just something about him that I just had to find out more.
“It took me up until around 2009 before I really found out who he was and what he was on death row for.
“Over the years I would constantly be going online and seeing how his latest appeals were going. I just couldn't get him out of my head.
“My friends used to call him ‘my obsession’ back then. I was totally obsessed and had to keep looking."
She now looks forward to their twice weekly phone calls "like a love sick teenager".
But their unusual relationship, and Michele, has been branded "deluded" by grieving Brandon's mother, JoAnn.
Lotter has rushed to Michele's defence with a bizarre letter defending her to the Daily Record.
In it, he said: "Michele German is my girlfriend. I love and care about her a lot. She has been a solid companion to me for many years now.
“She is in my corner 100% and that won’t change. I want to tell JoAnn Brandon and anyone out there who thinks it’s okay to attack her or call her names (deluded or crazy b****), it’s not.
“She has done nothing to you. She believes in me, loves me, and fights for me, period. So calling her deluded or a crazy b**** is just so beyond acceptable.
“Everyone has a right to believe in who they believe in and fight for them without being harassed or attacked.”
