Matthew Shepard wasn’t killed because he was gay, a new book says — but that won’t stop advocates from politicizing his murder.
Fifteen years ago this Oct. 6, Wyoming college student Matthew Shepard was savagely pistol-whipped by two homophobes for being gay, then pitilessly strung up on a log fence to die. It was a modern crucifixion, the signature hate crime of our era, the inspiration for books and movies and plays and songs and documentaries.
Except Shepard wasn’t murdered because he was gay, contends a new book. He was slain in a methamphetamine frenzy primarily by one man (with an accomplice who perhaps didn’t participate in the actual beating) who initially said that Shepard promised drugs in exchange for sex.
So, not only was Shepard’s primary killer not a homophobe who decided to lure Matt into a fatal trap because he was gay, he was himself likely gay or bisexual, contends gay journalist Stephen Jimenez in “The Book of Matt: Hidden Truths About the Murder of Matthew Shepard.”
The notion that Shepard was murdered for being gay originally came from two friends of his who had no firsthand knowledge of the case but started the homophobia narrative when Shepard was still alive (he didn’t die until five days after the attack) by calling a gay reporter, several gay organizations and the police.
By the time Shepard died, the motive of homophobia was solidly entrenched in the media. Then the leader in the killing, Aaron McKinney, and his girlfriend both cited his gay panic as a motive, apparently in the belief that it would be seen as a mitigating factor.
Now both of them say that story was a lie. And McKinney told a detective the night of the crime that Shepard “said he could turn us on to some cocaine or something, some methamphetamines, one of those two, for sex,” according to the book. From prison, McKinney now says his “original plan” that night was to rob a meth dealer, but when that didn’t work out he decided to rob Shepard instead. Prosecutor Cal Rerucha told the author that the murder was “driven by drugs.”
McKinney’s own father, when asked whether his son had had sex with other men, said “we’ve all experimented one way or another.” A limo driver told Jimenez he saw McKinney and two other men in the back of his vehicle “buck naked” and “playing around.” A manager of a gay bar in Denver told Jimenez he recognized both McKinney and accomplice Russell Henderson as patrons of his place.
A boyfriend of Shepard’s, Ted Henson, who said he went to a gay bar with McKinney and Shepard, said the latter once told him that “Aaron had offered [him] sex for money” and that “McKinney would sell [himself] to other guys.”
McKinney’s friend Elaine Baker said, “The whole thing was a lie and a coverup. Aaron didn’t hate [Shepard] for being gay. They were friends, for God’s sake . . . Aaron was bisexual.” McKinney’s friend Ryan Bopp said that McKinney and Shepard “knew each other. I had seen them at parties . . . I knew Aaron was selling [drugs] . . . him and Matt would go off to the side and they’d come back.”
McKinney, while denying being gay or bisexual, did, in an interview with the author, admit “messing around” with other boys as a youngster, which he dismissed as “the usual kids’ stuff.” He and Bopp said he’d been up for a week on a drug bender the night of Shepard’s murder.
Though the book is largely persuasive, there are oddities in Jimenez’s reporting, which sprang from his work on a 2004 piece for “20/20.” He says a Wyoming law-enforcement official declared flat-out that the murders had nothing to do with Shepard’s sexuality — but declined to go on the record because he said he feared someone might put a hit on members of his family. Jimenez says a police car tailed him while he was reporting the story. He tells dramatic tales of Deep Throat types leaving him anonymous letters or claiming that they risk getting a bullet in the back for talking.
In essence “The Book of Matt” is not about the killers’ culpability but about sloppiness on the part of the media and allied organizations who used the Shepard case in fundraising pitches. (This very article will be used in a similar fashion by groups that win donations by stoking fear and hatred of “right-wing media.”)
But if Jimenez’s somewhat problematic book is correct, it doesn’t make Shepard’s brutal murder any less horrific. It does make it less political, however. Political action groups won’t like that.
The gay magazine The Advocate said in a review that Jimenez “amassed enough anecdotal evidence to build a persuasive case that Shepard’s sexuality was, if not incidental, certainly less central than popular consensus has lead us to believe.”
The magazine went on, “There are valuable reasons for telling certain stories in a certain way at pivotal times, but that doesn’t mean we have to hold on to them once they’ve outlived their usefulness.”
The Insomniac Libertarian 
