EXCLUSIVE: Transgender Baby Killer Sues DOC Seeking to Overturn Ban on Taxpayer-Funded Gender Surgeries For Inmates

An inmate in Indiana serving a life sentence for killing an infant has launched a federal lawsuit demanding taxpayer-funded transsexual surgeries. Cory Wallace, who refers to himself as both Nikki Wallace and Astrid Allison, brutally physically abused his 4-month-old son, resulting in the infant’s death.

Wallace has now teamed up with the ACLU to challenge a 2023 statute prohibiting the Indiana Department of Correction (IDOC) from utilizing state or federal resources to facilitate or fund surgical gender-reassignment procedures for inmates.

In 2016, Wallace was convicted of battery and negligence resulting in the death of his infant son, Jensen, and sentenced to 72 years in prison. The Delaware County Court heard that Wallace failed to seek medical treatment for the infant after the child suffered what proved to be fatal head injuries.

After realizing the baby had died, Wallace set fire to the boy’s room in an attempt to cover up what he had done.

During sentencing, Judge Marianne Vorhees remarked: “Baby Jensen lived almost every day of his life in pain, hunger and distress,” and noted the many injuries Jensen had suffered prior to his death — including broken ribs, torn tissue in his mouth, and cuts and scrapes all over his body.

On February 10, 2015, Wallace called 911 to report that their house was on fire and that the infant was trapped inside. Only four minutes would elapse from the time of his call until firefighters removed the child from the home, but the boy was already dead.

The forensic pathologist who conducted Jensen Wallace’s autopsy concluded that the infant had died before the fire started, and noted several serious injuries which were inflicted by abuse, including two fractured ribs — one which was recent, and another which had been healing. Additionally, an investigator for the Muncie Fire Department concluded, upon investigation, that the fire was intentionally set.

Booking photo of Cory M. Wallace provided by Indiana Department of Corrections

Judge Vorhees said for those who attended the trial, viewing images of the infant’s corpse was “totally surreal, an out-of-body experience … like watching the worst horror movie you could imagine.” The judge emphasized that in her 14 years on the bench, she had “never seen such horrible injuries inflicted on a child, let alone a baby.”

In his defense, Wallace attempted to blame his wife Sheryl for the infant’s abuse and death. For her role, the mother was sentenced to 30 years in prison after pleading guilty to neglect of a dependent resulting in death.

Tragically, Baby Jensen was initially buried in an unmarked grave at Elm Ridge Memorial Park as a memorial stone was never purchased for him. Saddened by the bare appearance of his grave, the community of Muncie, Indiana, rallied to try and buy a memorial for Jensen. Inspired by the community’s efforts, Elm Ridge donated a proper headstone to the baby’s final resting place.

Jensen’s grave at Elm Ridge Memorial Park initially had no tombstone.

An investigation by a local news team revealed that the Department of Child Services (DCS) had been warned about Wallace abusing and neglecting children as far back as 2012.

Since 2023, Wallace has filed several complaints against the IDOC on the basis of his “gender identity”. The convicted baby killer claims that he “has identified as female” since the age of 10. The claims began after the state DOC Health Care Services Directive No. 2.17A took effect in 2022, which established procedures for diagnosing gender dysphoria and evaluating prisoners for “gender-affirming surgeries” utilizing Standards of Care published by lobby group the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH).

In 2023, Wallace began referring to himself as “Nikki” in legal and administrative records.

On April 18, he filed a petition to change the gender marker on his birth certificate to female. However, in July, the Madison Circuit Court dismissed the petition without a hearing, citing policy which restricts inmates from altering identity documents while serving out a criminal sentence for purposes of public safety.

In the same month that Wallace applied for a legal sex change on his birth certificate, Governor Eric Holcomb signed House Bill 1569 into law, which states: The department may not authorize the payment of any money, the use of any state resources, or the payment of any federal money administered by the state to provide or facilitate sexual reassignment surgery to an offender patient.” The law came into effect on July 1.

On July 3, Wallace filed a legal complaint demanding a hefty payout of $500,000 as compensation for not having been granted state-funded cosmetic surgeries. “In June 2023, Miss Wallace was informed by Mental Health Staff that she would not be receiving Sexual Reassignment Surgical Evaluation… This amounts to Deliberate Indifference, thus violating her Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause to basic medical care.”

On April 2, 2024, ACLU of Indiana attorneys Gavin Rose, Kenneth Falk, and Stevie Pactor filed a discrimination lawsuit against the IDOC demanding that Wallace be provided with “sexual reassignment surgery,” and seeking to overturn the state law banning public funds being spent on “gender-affirming” surgeries for inmates.

As is typical of lawsuits filed on behalf of male inmates claiming a gender identity, the ACLU claims that denying Wallace surgeries and legal recognition of womanhood is a violation of his civil rights – specifically, the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, which prohibit “cruel and unusual punishment” and discrimination.

According to the complaint, Wallace received a diagnosis of “gender dysphoria” in 2020, and the following year, he was prescribed estrogen, the female hormone, and spironolactone, an anti-androgen hormone that suppresses testosterone.

“With the hormones she has developed breasts and her body fat has changed to contour her body like a birth-assigned female,” reads Wallace’s 2024 complaint. The lawsuit also revealed that Wallace had been provided with bras and makeup by the IDOC so that he could “live as a female to the greatest extent possible.”

“Her penis and testicles absolutely disgust her,” reads the ACLU complaint. “She cannot go to the bathroom without thinking of castrating herself. She wishes to have an orchiectomy, which would remove her testicles, and a vaginoplasty, which would surgically create a vagina in place of her penis.”

The ACLU compares castrating Wallace and creating an orifice in place of his penis to surgical treatments performed on women who have undergone treatments for cancer.

From a court filing by the ACLU.

By January 2026, federal court records formally recognized his preferred name in filings, listing him as “Nikki Wallace a.k.a. Cory Wallace”. Confusingly, he has also recently taken the name “Astrid Allison,” as well as “Wayne Allison,” and court documents use a variation of all four names to refer to him.

As previously revealed by Reduxx, another trans-identified male convicted of the grisly murder of an infant in the state of Indiana was recently released on parole a full 30 years early. Jonathan Richardson, who now uses the name Autumn Cordellioné, was convicted in 2002 after his 11-month-old stepdaughter died in his care while her mother was at work. Having served less than half of his 55-year sentence, Richardson was quietly released in late December of 2025.

In 2023, the ACLU of Indiana – and the same attorneys who are currently representing Wallace – filed a legal complaint on behalf of Richardson claiming that the IDOC was subjecting him to “cruel and unusual punishment” by denying him the various plastic surgeries he had demanded.

In the suit, ACLU lawyers refer to Richardson as an “adult transgender female prisoner confined in a male institution,” and complains that “the total ban on gender-affirming surgery violates [his] right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment.”

Among a list of demands prepared by Richardson and presented as evidence in court was a document titled “Surgeries to Reach My Ideal Self.” The first item on the list, the court heard, was a “vagina,” followed by: breast implants, a brow lift, a brow reduction, a tummy tuck, gluteal implants (BBL), a uterus transplant, hair removal, and wigs.

However, during court proceedings Richardson stated that he had amended his demands to two surgeries, an orchiectomy and a penile inversion.

The 2023 ACLU lawsuit advocating for Richardson’s requested surgeries was successful the following year, when the United States District Court of Indiana ruled that Richardson had been subjected to “cruel and unusual punishment” by being denied the various plastic surgeries he had demanded.

The mother of the baby girl Richardson strangled to death opposed his legal bid to obtain surgery. Linda Thomas submitted a brief statement expressing her concern that his identity may be concealed from her when he is released from prison.

“On the day he murdered my child, I personally observed Plaintiff with a fresh bleeding tattoo of my child’s name on his arm while I was at the hospital that evening,” Thomas said. “I live in fear for myself and my children of the day [Richardson] is released from prison, which largely increases at the thought that [his] identity may be concealed upon release.”

ACLU attorneys under the leadership of Kenneth Falk attempted to have Thomas’ testimony dismissed as court evidence on the basis that “Ms. Cordellioné objected to the relevance of this declaration.”

During his deposition, Richardson told the legal counsel for the IDOC, Alex Carlisle, that in 2018, he had been informed about gender identity by another male inmate at CIF who went by the name of “Pearl.” According to Richardson, Pearl had brought in pamphlets from California state prisons that explained the concept of “gender identity” and introduced to him, for the first time, the idea of taking feminizing hormones.

“I always knew I was a girl, didn’t know that term applied. Because until I talked to Pearl I didn’t even really know transgender was the name for it. I was hearing at the time that it was transsexualism and that didn’t seem to fit me because it was apparently people that like to wear girl clothes to have sex,” Richardson said in his deposition.

According to social media posts made by Richardson, the two trans-identified males who were both convicted of killing infants are in a romantic relationship.

“I can’t sleep because I miss my trans significant other,” Richardson states in a video he posted to Instagram. “I call her my wife, but we’re not legally married. Her name’s Nikki, she’s beautiful. We spent so much time in the cell holding each other,” Richardson says, referring to Wallace.

In the video Richardson explains how he met Wallace after having been previously in a sexual relationship with the president of the Sureños, also known as the Sur 13 gang. Referring to Wallace with feminine pronouns, Richardson says, “She ended up moving in to the cell with me… The first night she moved in, I was like, ‘Want me to suck your d**k?’”

Richardson has made multiple images using AI generators, including images which imagine himself and Wallace with two young sons. Both men have tattoos bearing the names of the infants they killed.

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