A trans-identified male has been sentenced to 45 years in prison for a murder in Oklahoma while standing trial for a separate murder in New York City. Alex Ray Scott, 28, declared he was transgender very shortly after being taken into custody, and has been held in a women’s prison since.
Scott was first detained in January of 2020 in connection to the death of 64-year-old antiques dealer Kenneth Savinski. Savinski had been found dead in his New York City apartment, with neck wounds and a deep gash in his head. His body had been discovered when a friend had visited his home to check up on him.
Two days after Savinski’s body was found, Scott walked into a Manhattan police station covered in blood, muttering: “I think I may have killed someone last night.” Further investigation uncovered CCTV footage showing Scott walking out of Savinski’s apartment building, wearing the victim’s black jacket and counting money with noticeable hand injuries.
Scott then allegedly used Savinski’s credit cards to pay for a hotel room in New Jersey. Speaking to police, Scott says he awoke in the hotel room the following day, covered in blood with little recollection of what had happened the night before. Scott was in possession of the victim’s driver’s license and three of his credit cards when he was taken into custody.
At the time of his New York City arrest, Scott was wanted in the state of Oklahoma on three counts of lewd molestation of a child. He had been arrested in 2018 and released on bail, fleeing the state prior to a hearing in 2019 while wearing a court-ordered ankle monitor.
But after being questioned by police in New York, Scott also became implicated in a separate murder in Oklahoma.
On his person, NYPD found credit cards and identification documents belonging to Robin Skocdopole of Broken Arrow. Scott tried to explain the presence of those cards by explaining that he had previously lived with Skocdopole.
Local law enforcement then made several attempts to contact Skocdopole for questioning, but were unsuccessful, and quickly learned that the man had not been seen alive since April of 2019.
In February of 2020, just one month after Scott turned himself in for the murder of Savinski, police in Broken Arrow visited Skocdopole’s home and found the residence completely empty of all possessions.
Police returned with cadaver dogs and a forensic team and found that Skocdopole’s home had multiple areas of blood splatter, and that a large pool of blood was trapped in the transition strip between the laundry room and garage. DNA tests confirmed the blood belonged to Skocdopole.
Months later, in May, parts of Skocdopole’s body were found on a riverbank in Broken Arrow. Among them, his torso, left humerus, and other fragments. Because of Scott’s association with Skocdopole prior to his disappearance, an investigation was opened into Scott for the murder.
Due to Scott’s status as a member of the Muskogee Nation, the case was handed over to the FBI as states lack the authority to investigate or prosecute crimes that occur in Indian Country.
FBI investigators soon learned that Scott had been telling associates in Broken Arrow that Skocdopole had moved to Dallas for work around the same time that the activity in Skocdopole’s bank account abruptly ended.
The FBI was able to trace Scott’s whereabouts around that time by using GPS data from the ankle monitor he had been wearing in relation to his child molestation charges. They found he had visited a local Wal-Mart to purchase, and subsequently return, a chainsaw. A medical examination of Skocdopole’s remains found cuts consistent with a chainsaw.
In April of 2023, the FBI investigator leading the case submitted an affidavit stating there was probable cause to believe Scott was responsible for the murder of Skocdopole. One month later, FBI agents questioned Scott, who admitted to the murder and offered to help agents locate Skocdopole’s head.
Scott submitted a guilty plea in June of 2023, and was sentenced to 45 years in federal prison for the second-degree murder of Skocdopole in May of 2024. His 2019 charges related to the child molestation in Oklahoma were dismissed at the request of the state in 2022.
While, in a typical case, Scott would immediately be remanded to a Bureau of Prisons facility, the second murder charge he is facing in New York City has complicated the process.
Federal authorities have agreed to allow Scott to remain in the custody of the New York City Department of Corrections (NYCDOC) pending trial for the murder of Kenneth Savinski. He had pleaded “not guilty” in the New York case.
Scott declared a transgender identity shortly after turning himself over to police in New York City. He is currently being held at a women’s facility on Rikers Island, and his NYCDOC profile lists him as “female.”
If convicted in New York City, it is unknown how Scott will serve his two separate sentences at the state and federal level. But both NYCDOC and the Bureau of Prisons have gender self-identification policies which require transgender inmates to be housed on the basis of their preferred identity.
Curiously, Scott is the second trans-identified male criminal to come out of the Muskogee Nation in Oklahoma in recent news.
As previously reported by Reduxx, Robert William Perry II was found guilty of sexually abusing his 7-year-old stepdaughter and sentenced to life in prison for his crimes. The abuses took place from 2017 to 2018 on the Muscogee Nation reserve in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Perry changed his pronouns to “she/her” just after he was sentenced.