A D.C. medical examiner has ruled that Gaurav Gopalan, a 35-year-old aerospace engineer and theatermaker who was found dead near his Columbia Heights home on Sept. 10, was murdered.

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A preliminary autopsy had showed "no obvious signs of injuries or trauma on the decedent," but the City Paper is reporting that Gopalan, who was dressed in women's clothing and wearing makeup when he was found on 11th and Fairmont streets NW early that morning, died of "blunt-impact head trauma," according to Beverly Fields, chief of staff of the D.C. Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

Gopalan's was president of the Fred Schmitz Group, but theater was his passion. He worked on a number of D.C. productions, according to a City Paper profile that described him thus:

Not just handsome—though he was certainly that. He was joyful, kind, sweet, his friends say. And what made him beautiful was 'an insatiable appetite for life,' Heather Haney says. He was 'always looking to learn more, about himself, about others, about theater—he was always discovering something.'

[WCP]