SPOKANE — The bizarre saga of jazz pianist Billy Tipton, who went through life pretending to be a man until her death, continues in a Spokane courtroom.
A Spokane County Superior Court judge must decide who will inherit the $300,000 estate of Tipton’s ex-wife, a former stripper known as the “Irish Venus.”
Kathleen “Kitty” Tipton Oakes lived as bandleader Tipton’s wife in Spokane from 1962 until they separated in 1980. Oakes remarried in 1984 and later divorced. She died last year at age 73, and no will was found, The Spokesman-Review reported Sunday.
The three sons she and Tipton adopted have hired lawyers to pursue claims on her estate. If their claims don’t hold up, the woman’s uncles and cousins in the Midwest and South may share in the proceeds.
Judge Michael Price set a Dec. 8 bench trial to determine who gets Oakes’ estate, largely the proceeds from the 2006 sale of her South Hill home
Oakes was 28 and working in nightclubs in Seattle and Spokane when she met the 47-year old Tipton and they “married.” They adopted three infants and she became a middle-class housewife and Cub Scout den mother on Spokane’s South Hill.
Tipton began dressing as a man early in her jazz career, escaping limitations put on women musicians. Her bands played in the Midwest and Northwest starting in the 1940s. A saxophone and piano player, she performed and recorded with the Billy Tipton Trio in the 1950s.
She settled in Spokane and eventually retired from music in the 1970s. She became ill from a hemorrhaging ulcer and died in 1989, and her sexual identity as a woman was publicly revealed for the first time. Tipton left a will that made Oakes the executor of a $150,000 estate, most of which went to creditors.
Oakes quickly moved to cremate Tipton’s remains. She told reporters she never had sex with Tipton, never slept in the same room with her or saw her naked.
Two of her adopted sons, John Tipton and Scott Tipton, disputed her story. They said her claim that she never had sex with Tipton because of her own poor health was fake. They said Oakes kicked them out of the house and broke up the family when they were teenagers.
As the drama intensified, Oakes and her youngest adopted son, William, were aligned against the two older boys. Family squabbles grew so intense that Tipton’s ashes had to be split two ways between the dueling relatives.
William had cared for his adoptive father during his final illness in 1988 and early 1989. He was awarded Tipton’s show business memorabilia and a diamond ring. John, the oldest, and Scott, the middle child, were barely acknowledged, with $1 each.
Oakes’ later life was described as “unusual and different” in a 2004 report by Lin O’Dell, a Spokane elder-law attorney who served temporarily as Oakes’ guardian ad litem.
That year, Oakes’ estranged husband, Robert, had left the ailing 70-year-old on her own after taking at least half their money.
Oakes continued to live in her home until May 11, 2006, when she was admitted to Sacred Heart Medical Center for surgery for stomach and liver cancer. She was transferred to a nursing home in Fairfield and never returned home.
Oakes was involuntarily committed to Sacred Heart’s psychiatric ward on Nov. 12, 2006, and was transferred to Eastern State Hospital after Thanksgiving. She died there on April 6, 2007, a few days after her 73rd birthday.
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