Drag queen, community leader receives death threat

CHARLOTTE — A local community leader and drag performer, Clay Smith, was the subject of a death threat this week.

Smith, who performs as the popular Roxy C. Moorecox in LGBT and gay-friendly bars and clubs across the Carolinas, said an individual called Petra’s Piano Bar and Lounge in the Plaza-Midwood neighborhood and issued a death threat on Wednesday, Feb. 25.

“Is there a fat ass drag queen named Roxy C. Moorecox there,” the voice on the line asked Smith’s boyfriend Cody Bailey, who works the bar’s door and answers the phone. “Tell her if she walks outside she’s dead.”

The threat came on a night when Smith was helping to judge contestants in the “Petra’s Idol” talent competition.

“My boyfriend made a B-line to me after he hung up,” Smith told . “We’d just finished up Petra’s Idol and I was actually about to get my keys and go to Scorpio. He caught me in the hallway outside the dressing room and stopped me.”

Smith says the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department was called. The caller issuing the death threat had blocked his or her number. Although officers took a report and filed it, there wasn’t much they could do other than offer to escort Smith home. Smith left later with his boyfriend and stayed the night at his home.

“I think it is unfortunate,” Smith said. “I don’t look at it lightly. It does change your outlook on day-to-day activities and being in the public eye.”

Other than his performances as Roxy C. Moorecox, Smith is involved in community leadership in a variety of ways. He currently serves as a co-chair for the Pride Charlotte organizing committee and as the administrator of the Lesbian & Gay Community Center of Charlotte.