Twenty years ago, in the middle of rural America's heartland, there was a crime of horrific proportions. The victim was Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old openly gay college student who studied at the University of Wyoming. His killers, a pair of roof workers from rural Wyoming, were motivated by a combination of greed, homophobic hatred, and sadism.
His murder gained international notoriety, and sparked a debate on the institution of hate crime laws in the United States.
Matthew Shepard
The oldest of two brothers, Matthew Wayne Shepard was born on December 1, 1976, in the city of Casper, Wyoming, to Judy and Dennis Shepard.
From an early age, Matt, as he was known to his friends and family, showed himself to be a very talented and optimistic young man. He was highly intelligent, and took a keen interest in politics.
But it wasn't just intelligence that made Matt Shepard who he was. It was also his kindness, his amiable personality, and his sense of humor. A girl who knew Shepard once described him as "a tenderhearted and kind person" who was friendly with all students and had great potential in life.
But, as a young man, Matt also came to realize that he was a homosexual. In rural, ultra-conservative Wyoming, this was often frowned upon by the community, and Matt Shepard kept it a secret for years. Repressing his true feelings was difficult, and it is possible that Matt's repression of his homosexuality contributed to his adolescent history of depression and suicidal thoughts.
Matt had also been sexually assaulted during a high school trip to Morocco, and was a frequent target of bullies because of his short stature.
After high school, Matthew Shepard finally decided to come out to his family. He expected them to be surprised, possibly even upset, but Judy Shepard assured her young son that she had suspected he was gay for years, and that she and the rest of the family still loved him just as much as ever.
After coming out to his family, Matt's depression subsided. While studying in North Carolina, Matt eventually became best friends with Romaine Patterson, a lesbian who attended the same college as he did.
In early 1998, Matthew Shepard moved back to his home state, and enrolled in the University of Wyoming, where he studied political science and international relations and became involved in the university's LGBT student alliance.
Later that same year, Matthew Shepard would cross paths with two other young men, who would later become his murderers.
Evil Roofers
On the night of October 6, 1998, Matthew Shepard arrived at the Fireside Lounge & Bar in Laramie, Wyoming, where he ordered a few drinks. Shepard was looking for a gay bar that night, and a taxi driver had suggested the Fireside Lounge might be a place to start.
While he sat at the bar, Shepard caught the attention of two other patrons: 21-year-old Aaron McKinney and 21-year-old Russell Henderson.
Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson could not have come from a more different background than Matt Shepard. McKinney and Henderson were both uneducated high school dropouts and ex-convicts who had served time for burglary, robbery, drunk driving, and assault.
McKinney was the most vile of the pair. Already possessing a criminal record for burglary and assault, McKinney was known to be a bully, a drunk, and a notorious homophobe. McKinney's criminal history had prevented him from obtaining a well-paying job, and he lived in a shabby trailer home with his 18-year-old girlfriend, who had already borne him a child. He and Henderson, a former Eagle Scout turned high-school-dropout, both worked as local roofers.
At the bar, something about Matthew Shepard caught McKinney's eye. McKinney would later tell police that Shepard was dressed like a "fag" or a "queer".
Matt Shepard was small, alone and defenseless. He was the perfect prey for McKinney. McKinney and Henderson devised a plan to lure Shepard into their truck, rob him, and rough him up.
McKinney and Henderson approached Shepard and engaged him in small talk. After several minutes, McKinney told Shepard that he was gay and invited him to come over to his truck. Shepard agreed, and he got into the truck with McKinney and Henderson. The truck left the parking lot and headed down a desolate road.
Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson are the only people who know what happened next. McKinney would later claim that Shepard made a sexual advance. Henderson denied this, claiming McKinney attacked Shepard unprovoked.
Either way, for Matt Shepard, the ride soon turned into a night of terror. While Henderson drove the truck, McKinney suddenly pulled out a .357 revolver and aimed it at Shepard. "We're not fags", he sneered to the startled young man. "You've just been jacked!".
McKinney then began beating Shepard across the face with the gun's handle as the young man pleaded for mercy.
Soon afterwards, McKinney ordered Henderson to pull over to the side of the road. Removing Shepard's shoes to stop him from running away, McKinney hauled the young man out of the truck, and he and Henderson dragged Shepard to the side of the road. Shepard tried to fight back, but McKinney and Henderson easily overpowered him.
Henderson later claimed that, at this point, Shepard began "mouthing off" to McKinney, and told them that he knew their license plate number and would call the cops.
Enraged, McKinney grabbed his gun again and, in a sadistic frenzy, again began beating Shepard repeatedly over the head with the pistol's handle as hard as he could, taunting and mocking the young man as he begged for his life. Henderson did not hit Shepard, but he held the man down so that McKinney could beat him, and cheered his friend on.
McKinney ordered Henderson to tie Shepard to a nearby crude fence, so Henderson bound Shepard's hands with rope, and lashed them around the fence post. As Shepard begged for mercy, McKinney kicked him repeatedly in the groin, then continued bashing him with the butt of his pistol, fracturing and shattering his skull in seven different places.
After stealing Shepard's wallet, McKinney and Henderson climbed back into their truck and drove off, leaving Matt Shepard still tied to the fence, severely battered, bleeding, and exposed to the frigid night temperatures.
Discovery
Early the next morning, cyclist Aaron Kreifels rode down the same desolate road outside Laramie, Wyoming. As he passed by the wooden fence, something caught the cyclist's eye. It appeared as if a figure was tied to the wooden posts. He slowed his bike down to take a closer look. At first, Kreifels thought it might be a scarecrow.But, as the cyclist looked closer, he became horrified. The figure was faintly breathing, and slumped in a pool of blood. This was no scarecrow. This was a human.
The terrified Kreifels ran several hundred yards to a nearby house, where he called police.
Reggie Fluty was the first police officer to arrive at the scene. Approaching the wooden fence, she saw a scene of unimaginable horror.
A battered, bloody, unconscious young man was slumped against the ground, with his hands tied to the wooden fence, surrounded by a puddle of blood. He was faintly breathing, but barely alive. His face was completely caked with blood except for two streaks down from his eyes, where the blood has been washed away by his tears.
A library card found next to the body identified the man as Matthew Shepard.
He had been tied to the fence for 18 hours, and was clinging to life by an ever-thinning thread.
Matthew Shepard was airlifted to a hospital across the state border in Fort Collins, Colorado. There, doctors determined he had been so severely beaten that his skull had been fractured in numerous places. His brain stem was severely damaged, and he was in a coma. Shepard was placed on life support, but none of the doctors expected him to ever recover.
Judy and Dennis Shepard were in Saudi Arabia at the time of the attack. When they were notified of Matt's condition, they immediately flew to Fort Collins to see their son. Judy later recalled that Matt had been so badly beaten and mutilated that he was almost unrecognizable.
Doctors told the Shepards that their son wasn't expected to survive. Nevertheless, Judy and Dennis held out hope that, somehow, Matt would recover.
News of the horrific attack spread quickly through Wyoming, and the small city of Laramie was thrust into the international spotlight. Residents of Laramie were in shock. Wyoming was a sparsely populated state with a very low crime rate, and Laramie was a sleepy midwestern city where everyone knew everybody else. Crimes like this just didn't happen here.
The Arrests
While Matt Shepard lay in a coma, one of his assaulters was himself receiving medical treatment in the same hospital, just a few rooms down the hallway.
Just 15 minutes after leaving Matt Shepard tied to the wooden fence, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson had gotten into a street brawl with a pair of Hispanic tire-slashers after exchanging insults. As he had done with Matt Shepard, Aaron McKinney had bludgeoned one of the street thugs over the head with the butt of his revolver, fracturing his skull and almost killing him.
Police arrested all four men and confiscated McKinney's gun. Officers had noticed that the handle of McKinney's revolver was covered with blood, more blood than was possible from the street fight.
The following day, after hearing about the beating of Matthew Shepard, police arrested McKinney at the hospital. Soon afterwards, Russell Henderson was arrested. Both were charged with aggravated assault, kidnapping, and robbery. Both of the suspects' girlfriends were also arrested for lying to police and trying to cover up the attack.
When interrogated by police, both Henderson and McKinney confessed to the violent assault. McKinney made numerous homophobic remarks during his interrogation, and claimed that Matt Shepard had made sexual advances on him. He showed no remorse for his actions, and calmly relayed to the police every detail of the gruesome attack.
For days, as Matthew Shepard lingered between life and death, concerned citizens from all across the country descended upon Wyoming to show their solidarity with the LGBT community. Crowds of people held candlelight vigils outside the Fort Collins hospital where Matthew Shepard lay hooked up to a life-support machine.
Despite the severity of Shepard's injuries, doctors did their best to try and save the young man's life. Nevertheless, they also determined that Matt Shepard had suffered from serious brain damage. It was clear that he would never recover. Nevertheless, his family clung to the faint hope that, somehow, he would survive. Matthew Shepard remained on full life support for days as he lay in the hospital.
But it was no use. The young man's injuries were too severe. At 12:53 AM on October 12, 1998, six days after being attacked, 21-year-old Matthew Wayne Shepard died from his wounds, never waking from his coma.
The charges against Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson were now upped from aggravated assault to first-degree murder.
Outcry
The murder of Matthew Shepard sent shockwaves through not just the state of Wyoming, but through the entire country as well. Following the murder, members of the small LGBT community at the University of Wyoming took extra precaution whenever they traveled across campus. Everybody walked with a partner, and nobody went out alone, especially at night.
Even people who were openly anti-gay were horrified by the brutality of Shepard's killing. Murder, especially under such horrible circumstances, was, for them, a step too far.
The funeral of Matthew Shepard was attended by thousands of people from across the country and the world. Mourners wept with the Shepard family, held candles, and sang Christian hymns when Matthew Shepard's memorial service was held.
The national media also attended the funeral services, broadcasting the memorial service live for all to see. For the first time, people across the entire world became focused on the small city of Laramie, and there were international demands for the institution of hate crime laws.
But, unfortunately, not all of the people at the funeral were there to pay respects to the dead young man. While memorial services were being held inside the church, a small group of picketers gathered on the lawn outside of the building. These people were not there to show their support for the Shepard family; rather, they were there to protest his funeral and preach their message of hatred and intolerance.
These people were from the Westboro Baptist Church, a radical Christian fundamentalist ministry based in Topeka, Kansas. Accompanying the protesters was Westboro's pastor, Fred Phelps, a former civil rights lawyer turned anti-LGBT preacher. He and his followers carried brightly-colored signs with vile slogans such as "MATT IN HELL", "NO TEARS FOR FAGS", "HELL IS REAL - ASK MATT", "AIDS CURES FAGS", and "FAGS DIE, GOD LAUGHS".
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| Pastor Fred Phelps of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church led a vile protest at Matthew Shepard's funeral |
The protests horrified the entire country, which was still recovering from Shepard's murder. Unable to evict the protesters due to free speech laws, a group of people dressed as angels shielded the mourners from the vile picketers, encircling the Westboro members and drowning out their hateful chants with Christian hymns.
The "Gay Panic Defense"
Following the funeral, emotions turned from grief into anger. Now that Matthew Shepard was gone, the attention turned towards exacting justice upon his killers.Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson were charged with premeditated first-degree murder, aggravated felony murder, aggravated robbery, and kidnapping. Additionally, both of the suspects' girlfriends were charged with being accessories to the crime for lying to police and trying to provide false alibis for the pair.
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| Russell Henderson (left) and Aaron McKinney (right) appear in court as they are charged with first-degree murder |
Before he could go to trial, Russell Henderson arranged a plea deal with prosecutors. In order to avoid the death penalty, he would plead guilty to all charges and testify against Aaron McKinney.
The prosecution accepted his deal, and, on April 5th, 1999, District Court Judge Jeffrey Donnell sentenced Russell Henderson to life in prison without parole.
Aaron McKinney, however, rejected a plea deal and decided he would take his chances with a jury.
Due to the heinous nature of the murder, prosecutors decided to seek the death penalty against McKinney. At the time, only two people were on Wyoming's death row, but prosecutors were reasonably certain they could convince a jury that Aaron McKinney deserved to die for his crime.
Additionally, Wyoming had recently carried out its first execution in 26 years when, in 1992, the state executed convicted murderer Mark Hopkinson by lethal injection. All in all, Aaron McKinney stood a very good chance of being put to death.
McKinney's trial commenced in late October of 1999, about a year after Matthew Shepard was murdered.
In their opening arguments, Aaron McKinney's attorneys admitted that their client had, in fact, killed Matthew Shepard, but that the murder had been committed while McKinney was "temporarily insane".
Specifically, McKinney's lawyers put forth a "gay panic defense", claiming that Matthew Shepard had made sexual advances on Aaron McKinney while they were in the truck, allegedly by resting his hand on McKinney's knee. These advances, claimed the defense, had driven McKinney to "temporary insanity" and caused him to react violently and attack Shepard.
The defense was so outrageous that the prosecution objected to the entire argument. The judge rejected the "gay panic defense" put forth by McKinney's attorneys, claiming it had no legal basis.
Despite the ruling, McKinney's lawyers continued to use the defense in court. They brought in two witnesses who testified that Matt Shepard was allegedly "aggressive" in making advances on other men, and claimed that McKinney's reaction was based not off of Shepard's homosexuality, but off of his behavior.
The prosecution, however, played tapes of McKinney's interrogation, which clearly recorded him using anti-gay slurs such as "faggot" and "queer", indicating that McKinney had a festering hatred of homosexuals. Additionally, the recordings and the forensic evidence demonstrated that McKinney continued to beat Shepard long after the young man would have been thoroughly incapacitated.
McKinney was not "provoked", said the prosecution; he was a cold-blooded, hate-filled, remorseless killer.
On November 8th, 1999, after hearing seven days of testimony and deliberating for 12 hours, the jury returned a mixed verdict.
Aaron McKinney was acquitted of premeditated murder, as the jury could not prove that his crimes were planned out beforehand. However, the jury found McKinney guilty of felony murder, robbery, and kidnapping.
Even with his acquittal on the count of premeditated murder, McKinney was still far from safe. His felony murder conviction could still warrant a death sentence, and the prosecution still intended to send him to the lethal injection chamber at Wyoming State Penitentiary.
Life for a Life
Just one day after Aaron McKinney was found guilty of the murder of Matthew Shepard, the penalty phase of his trial began. McKinney would either go to prison for the rest of his life or would be condemned to die by lethal injection.
The jurors were scheduled to deliberate on the death penalty that day after hearing arguments from the prosecution and the defense, but, before that could happen, the Shepard family decided to meet with both the defense and the prosecution teams.
Incredibly, the prosecution decided to offer Aaron McKinney a bargain: If he accepted a sentence of life in prison, waived his right to appeal, and agreed to never discuss the case with the media, there would be no penalty phase of the trial and his life would be spared.
The prosecution had earlier discussed the bargain with the Shepard family. Judy Shepard told the prosecutor that it was understandable to want revenge for her son's murder, but that revenge wasn't what Matthew Shepard stood for. She didn't see any justice for Matthew Shepard in killing another person.
In an incredible act of strength, bravery, and fortitude, Judy Shepard agreed to spare the life of her son's murderer. She would show Aaron McKinney exactly what he didn't show Matthew Shepard - mercy.
On November 3rd, 1999, after being notified of the arrangement, Judge Barton Voigt formally sentenced Aaron McKinney to life in prison without parole for the murder of Matthew Shepard.
After Aaron McKinney was sentenced, the judge allowed Dennis Shepard to address the murderer of his son.
"Matt has become a symbol, putting a boy-next-door face on hate crimes.", Dennis told McKinney. "Matt would be thrilled to learn his death helped others."
"On the other hand", he continued, pointing to McKinney, "your agreement to life without parole has taken yourself out of the spotlight and out of the public eye".
"Best of all", he went on, "you won't be a symbol. No years of publicity, no chance of commutation, no nothing - just a miserable future and a more miserable end."
"I would like nothing better than to see you die, Mr. McKinney", Dennis Shepard continued. "However, this is the time to begin the healing process. To show mercy to someone who showed no mercy."
"Mr. McKinney", he concluded, "I give you life in the memory of one who no longer lives."
"May you have a long life, and may you thank Matthew every day for it."
Aftermath: Hate Crime Laws and Wyoming's Shortcomings
In the twenty years since the murder of Matthew Shepard, much has changed. Anti-discrimination ordinances and hate crime laws were proposed, which would increase the penalty for crimes committed against a person for their sexual orientation, gender, race, religion, or ethnicity.
In 2009, President Barack Obama signed into law the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which expanded the 1969 US Federal hate-crimes law to include victims of crimes motivated by anti-LGBT hatred.
In many other states, as well as the District of Columbia, state governments passed their own state hate-crime laws which increased the penalty for anti-LGBT crimes. Many states also passed their own anti-discrimination laws, which outlawed business or employment discrimination against people based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.
However, despite the advances we have made in instituting hate crimes and anti-discrimination legislation, there are still five states in the United States that have neither hate crime laws nor anti-discrimination laws.
One of these states, surprisingly, is Wyoming, the very same state in which Matt Shepard was murdered. In Wyoming, it is still legal for businesses to refuse service or fire people for being homosexual or transgender, and there are no hate crime enhancements on the state's lawbooks.
Now, one would think that, of all places, Wyoming, which saw itself thrust into the international spotlight following the Shepard murder, would be the first to institute such legislation. The murder of Matthew Shepard horrified even some of the most conservative individuals in Wyoming, and the backlash from the murder focused national attention on implementing legislation to prevent hate crimes and LGBT discrimination.
But, surprisingly, not only has Wyoming never implemented anti-discrimination or hate crime laws, but every single congressional district in the state voted AGAINST the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act, making it one of only three states to do so.
A common refrain heard in the aftermath of the Shepard murder was that Wyoming was being given a bad reputation. Residents complained that their state was being regarded as a hotbed of homophobes, and that Wyoming's image was unfairly tarnished.
But, while it is true that Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson are clearly not representative of the entire state of Wyoming, they are a symptom of a harmful climate of fear, hatred, and bigotry that the LGBT community has had to deal with for centuries.
Most expected that the murder of Matthew Shepard would shatter that climate of homophobia, and, to be fair, it actually has. More people support gay marriage and LGBT rights now than ever before, and we have come a long way in twenty years.
But, if Wyoming really wants to show the world that it is not the backwards hotbed of bigots that they feel they have been unfairly stereotyped as, then they should take legislative action to implement hate crime laws and anti-discrimination ordinances.
Part of the healing process in this case is admitting that one has a problem.
The murder of Matthew Shepard exposed that problem to the entire world. Now, it is time for Wyoming to do their part in fixing it, so that they may live up to their state motto: "Equal Rights".
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