brand.patrice

Brandi West, left, and Cliff Youens with Patrice LeBlanc, right.


Anybody out there remember Brandi West? Back in the 1980s, she was a well-known and popular drag queen here in Texas. She lived, I think, in Houston, or near Houston.
Anyway, Brandi West’s real name was John Clifford “Cliff” Youens who in 1986, at the age of 32, shared a home with a young woman named Patrice LeBlanc from Louisiana. She was 20. Then in March of 1986, Partice’s body was found, wrapped in a comforter and chained to a pair of cinder blocks, in Lake Livingston in San Jacinto County, according to UPI reports at the time. She had been stabbed 39 times.
And Brandi/Cliff was on the run. Until June, when he was arrested in his mother’s home in Houston after running from Houston to Beaumont to Baton Rouge, through Alabama, Georgia and South Caroline to New York, before winding up back in Houston.
The case went to trial in September that year, and Youens was convicted and sent to prison for life. Today he is imprisoned in the Michael Unit of the Texas Prisons in Tennessee Colony, in Anderson County, just northwest of Palestine.
There’s been more than one book written about the case, including true-crime writer Kathryn Casey’s The Drag Queen Murder.
You are probably wondering why I am bringing up such ancient history. Well, that’s because Cliff/Brandi will be featured in tonight’s (Friday, June 12) episode of “Facing Evil with Candice DeLong” on the Investigation Discovery Channel. It airs at 9 p.m. CST. And if the video clip from the show available on the Investigation Discovery website is any indication, it could be an interesting show.
Back in the day, news reports referred to Patrice as Brandi/Cliff’s “roommate,” and said police believed Cliff killed Patrice when she rejected his romantic advances. This brief snippet of Candice Delong’s interview, however, seems to suggest that the two had a very intimate relationship and it implies, at least, that Cliff — who has previously refused to admit that he killed Patrice — confesses to the murder to Candice.
I didn’t know Brandi West. Or Cliff Youens. Or Patrice LeBlanc. I do believe I vaguely remember seeing Brandi perform, way back in the day. And I certainly remember hearing all about the lurid case. So I am gonna watch tonight’s episode of “Facing Evil,” or least DVR it to watch later. Because it is, after all, a part of LGBT history in Texas.