The prison van winds its way north and east to Lusk.

Guards at the Wyoming Women's Center are transporting a prisoner from the Laramie County Detention Center. They pass small towns along the Union Pacific railroad where the mile-long coal trains rumble by. No one says much.

The prisoner, Miki Ann Dimarco, passed six bad checks in February and March of 1998 for a total of $742.85 but was released on probation. Her probation officer then revoked her for a lack of verifiable identity, among other things. On May 2, 2000, after 38 days in the Laramie County Jail, she is being transferred.

No one knows who Dimarco is. She rearranges nine digits and offers them as her Social Security number, but it always comes out as invalid or as someone else's number. She is evasive when asked direct questions about her life.

Her evasiveness stems, in part, from her gender identity. Though she has lived her life - and was sentenced - as a woman, prison officials had gotten advance word that Dimarco has incomplete male genitalia: a small penis and no testicles. Dimarco is an intersexual - commonly, but incorrectly, called a hermaphrodite.

She speaks with a Southern accent, with a bit of "you-go-girl" attitude. Her hair, dyed blond, falls to the bottom of her ears.

Gentle hills and farmland fringed by unobtrusive housing frame the Women's Center, which holds about 90 inmates. A road running from the front of the prison has a yellow sign that says, "SAGE HEN X-ING." The van rolls into the Women's Center receiving area.

Prison policy calls for a strip search of new inmates and an inventory of unusual marks, scars or tattoos. Dimarco takes off her clothes and is embarrassed when Lt. Darlene Rea and a nurse look at her naked. She is slender and has breasts.

Every inmate who comes to the Women's Center is housed in the maximum-security East Wing for 30 days until they can be classified and officials can see how they behave. There are three pods in the East Wing, and most new prisoners are placed in Pod Two, which has two floors of cells and a day room with three tables bolted to the floor. Dimarco is placed in Pod Three, a four-cell segregated area that is used to house the Women's Center's worst inmates.

In the next 14 months, Dimarco will meet Lorrie Hood in Pod Three.

In 1997, Hood beat her 5-year-old daughter to death, wrapped the body in garbage bags and a blanket and hid the body in her Casper house for nine months. Hood is periodically sent to Pod Three as punishment for breaking prison rules.

A month later, Dimarco is given her initial classification. She scores a one for her crime and then scores zero in every other category, including "Escape History," "Most serious prior conviction," and "Past institutional behavior." Her recommended custody level is circled "minimum" but there is an "X" through that. Her classification is overridden to "close restricted," which means she will remain in Pod Three.

A note on the form, in which her name is misspelled, says, "Inmate Demarco, based on medical testing has been determined to be a male and therefore requires housing separate from any other inmate."

Dimarco, looking at photocopies of the original forms years later, says, "They did these and brought them to me and said, 'You need to sign this.' So that was it, period."

For 438 days she is left alone in her cell with only the passing company of inmates like Hood, who she is not allowed to speak to, a few visits from guards and trips to group therapy.

There could be six million people in the United States whose genitals don't tell the story of their whole sexual identity.

In a study of medical literature in various countries from 1955 to 2000, medical researchers concluded that gender deviation from ideal male or female "may be as high as 2 percent of live births."

For years, people in the intersex movement have been fighting the notion that people are born either male or female and should be identified as one or the other.

In 1993, Anne Fausto-Sterling, a professor of biology and women's studies at Brown University, wrote that instead of two sexes, there should be five to accommodate different physical characteristics. In a 2000 article she suggested that "one should acknowledge that people come in an even wider assortment of sexual identities than genitals can distinguish."

But there are no clear guidelines on how the law will treat intersexed persons. Can they get married? Should they go to a men's prison or women's prison if they commit a crime? In 2000, there is not a single case in any court in the United States that deals with intersexuals.

Suffice it to say, the Women's Center is facing a new dilemma in housing Dimarco.

Alone in her cell in Pod Three, Dimarco sleeps all the time.

In a meeting with a prison psychologist on May 12, 2000, she complains of depression and loneliness. She is perplexed at the problems her gender identity presents to prison officials. In a report on the meeting, Tori Towers, PhD, writes officials should "reduce isolation if possible."

Dimarco's cell is 9 feet by 12 feet. It is a painted cement block with a bed, a steel sink, a steel toilet and a solid steel door. She asks to be moved to general population.

Prison officials say they have two concerns.

The first is her lack of verifiable identity: Who is Miki Ann Dimarco?

With the help of the federal government, her probation officer tried and failed to track down her Social Security numbers, issued to Miki Timm, Miki Markeson, Miki May, Miki Markson or Melody Tankersly. Her former husbands, their children and her parents cannot be tracked down.

"I am perplexed as to who this person may really be," writes Carla L. Heller, a senior special agent for the Social Security Administration in an April 1999 report, "but I am convinced she is not MIKI ANN MARKESON - DIMARCO - TIMM, with a DOB of 02/04/1959."

Women's Center officials fingerprint her and criminal background checks show a few misdemeanors, shoplifting in Gering, Neb., another in Colorado, a warrant in South Dakota. These are crimes committed by a woman. Officials believe, in the beginning at least, Dimarco may have a male criminal history.

But inmates commonly have outstanding warrants. Inmates also sometimes invent educational histories, saying they have high school diplomas when they don't. Less common are those who have five or six different Social Security numbers, and there are rare inmates - unscientifically put at 1 in 100 by a prison official - whose history officials cannot track at all.

None of these things would get an inmate thrown in Pod Three indefinitely, and it is not clear that officials are really concerned with Dimarco's past. Every three months she is reclassified, and she always scores zero as a security risk, but officials always override her for the same sole reason: "Inmate Dimarco … has been determined to be a male …"

So what they're really concerned about is her gender, and more to the point, whether she will be a predator or even be preyed upon.

Warden Nola Blackburn sought guidance from her superiors at the Department of Corrections. She writes: "I need to know if we have the potential of predatory, sexual behavior being employed by this inmate."

She gets no guidance on this issue from the Department of Corrections.

But as officials have time to observe Dimarco for themselves, it is clear she is not a threat.

Psychiatrist Bruce Kahn meets with Dimarco and, in a June 6, 2000 report, he writes she has no tendency toward violent or sexual predatory behaviors and probably cannot achieve an erection.

She struggles with honesty and can be manipulative but she is also "quite fragile." Kahn recommends she be transferred to the Wyoming State Hospital for more intensive care than the prison can provide. He suggests they consider resentencing her as a man suffering from Gender Identity Disorder. Yet, the page in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV, which he attaches to his report, states that "the disturbance is not concurrent with a physical intersex condition." He also says she should be kept separate from the general population.

Other officials believe she is a man in a women's prison, but that does not explain her restrictive confinement.

She cannot have jewelry, makeup, tweezers, nail clippers, a mirror, facial tissue, a clock, a clock radio, a hair dryer, a television - Pod Three does not have electrical sockets - a walkman and other items.

Officials determine Dimarco is not dangerous, but treat her as though she as volatile and dangerous as Lorrie Hood, her sometime pod-mate, a killer.

In January 2001, on her first day of work at the Wyoming Women's Center in Lusk, Dianna Klein gets a tour.

The corporal who is conducting the tour leads Klein to the maximum-security East Wing.

"This is our special lady over here in Pod Three by herself," says the corporal, according to Klein.

"Special lady" was one term that guards applied to Miki Ann Dimarco. She was also called an "it" and "a man trying to get in a women's prison," according to Klein and Dimarco.

"How come?" Klein says she responds.

"'Cause she had a sex change."

"Oh really, how do you know she wasn't born that way?"

"Well it's in her file."

Klein goes to read her file and finds out Dimarco is in prison for passing bad checks. She goes to talk to Lt. Darlene Rea.

"How come she is down here and she only had a bad check?" Klein says she asks.

According to Klein, Rea responds, "Well, because of her condition." Rea says she does not recall the conversation.

"Yeah, but nobody would have to know about it, we could put her on minimum and leave her locked in up there where at least she could have TV."

There is more than TV at stake in a prisoner's housing assignment.

After an inmate gets her initial classification she generally goes into the dormitory-style West Wing of the building. There are long, carpeted halls with 12 rooms accessed through wooden doors on either side. Prisoners are allowed two electronic devices per room and can purchase cable with their own money. There are two, single washrooms with showers at the end of each hall.

The walls are often decorated, as on a recent day, with cardboard or paper cutouts of Snoopy and the Peanuts gang.

Women's Center officials pride themselves on not warehousing the prisoners.

There is a computer room that is almost indistinguishable from classrooms in high schools, where inmates can learn work skills. On the opposite side of the hall, there is an area called living skills, where, in the beauty salon, there are two flip-top hair dryers harkening back to the 1950s. Cutout pictures of models with hair a la mode are pasted to the wall.

Dimarco is forbidden from getting a haircut. Her hair, black with gray in the front when not dyed, grew down below her shoulders.

She is allowed out of her cell for five and a half hours a day, but that time is limited if a new prisoner is coming into the East Wing. She never gets a good night's sleep because officials are always bringing down a prisoner for the night when there is a suicide attempt or disturbance.

Rules in Pod Three say she is never allowed to speak to another prisoner, though she tries. She can talk through the doors or, when she is out in the day room, she will watch TV and talk out of the corner of her mouth about how much she hates the pod.

She gets along well with Lorrie Hood and others who come through Pod Three.

"Why are you down here?" the other inmates ask her. "You don't have a violent crime, you've never done anything that was violent and we don't understand."

Dimarco replies, "I guess it's because of my illness, because of my MS and lupus."

There is no evidence she has either disease.

In August 2000 she is allowed to go to group therapy in Pod One, but her other contact is limited.

She is looking at two to four years of this, but she is working on a sentence reduction.

In Monday's Star-Tribune: Dimarco has her day in court.