The Story of Matthew Shepard's Murder Changed America. But It Wasn't True.

This episode critically examines the narrative surrounding Matthew Shepard's murder, exploring if the widely believed motive of homophobic hate crime might be a misconception, focusing instead on other possible motives like drug-related issues.

1. The widely accepted story of Matthew Shepard’s murder as a hate crime is questioned, suggesting alternative motives related to drugs and personal vendettas.
2. The episode highlights the complex role media narratives play in shaping public perception and policy.
3. It discusses the impact of misreported events on communities, in this case, Laramie, which faced long-term stigma.
4. The challenges of overcoming entrenched narratives despite new evidence are explored, showing resistance from various societal quarters.
5. The episode underscores the importance of rigorous journalism and the quest for truth in reporting complex social issues.

1: Introduction

Bari Weiss introduces the episode's theme, questioning the true motive behind Matthew Shepard's murder. The initial portrayal as a hate crime is contrasted with newer evidence suggesting other factors. Bari Weiss: "What if Matthew Shepard wasn't murdered for being gay, but for something else?"

2: The Original Narrative

Discussion on how Matthew Shepard's murder was reported and how it influenced America's view on hate crimes. Bari Weiss: "The death of Matthew Shepard became the most notorious anti-gay hate crime in American history."

3: New Investigations

Details the investigation by journalist Steven Jimenez, revealing drugs and personal relationships might be central to the motive. Steven Jimenez: "Matthew and his attackers were not strangers, complicating the hate crime narrative."

4: Community Impact

Explores how Laramie has been affected by the national portrayal as a town marked by homophobia. Laramie Resident: "Laramie got a bad rap from it."

5: Reflections on Truth

Considers the implications of pursuing truth in journalism and the resistance faced by those challenging established stories. Bari Weiss: "How identity can drive the way we think about things and actually override the truth."

1. Question Narratives: Always look deeper than the mainstream narrative, especially in complex criminal cases.
2. Critical Consumption of Media: Evaluate media stories critically, looking for potential biases or incomplete reporting.
3. Engage in Community Discussions: Participate in local discussions to understand community issues and impacts of national narratives.
4. Support Transparent Journalism: Advocate for and support journalistic endeavors that prioritize thorough investigation over sensationalism.
5. Educate on Social Issues: Use real cases as starting points for broader discussions on hate crimes, drug abuse, and social justice.

In April 1997, Ellen was on the cover of Time magazine declaring, “Yep, I’m Gay.” Then a few weeks later, her sitcom alter ego came out on TV. It was watched by 42 million people. The next year, in 1998, Will & Grace premiered on NBC.

This was a watershed moment for gay representation. Then came: The Pursuit of Happiness, Mad About You, Spin City, Chicago Hope, Melrose Place, NYPD Blue, My So-Called Life, Fired Up, The Crew, Profiler, and High Society—which all started to include gay characters.

The whole decade consisted of landmark moments for gay rights. In May 1996, the Supreme Court decided in Romer v. Evans that Colorado's 2nd Amendment, which denied gays and lesbians protections against discrimination, was actually unconstitutional, and in May 1998, Bill Clinton signed an executive order that made it illegal to discriminate based on sexual orientation in federal workplaces. The gay-rights movement in America was making real progress.

Then, something horrific happened. On a late October night in 1998, in a little town called Laramie, Wyoming, a 21-year-old college student named Matthew Shepard was killed.

The details of the murder were brutal. He was pistol-whipped 18 times, beaten, tied to the bottom of a split-rail wooden fence in a remote part of town, and left there unconscious to die. When he was found, it was said that he looked like a scarecrow. One of the first responders said Matthew’s face had so much blood that the only place you could see his skin was where the path of his tears had fallen and washed away the blood. He died a few days later in a nearby hospital.

In the weeks and months that followed, a narrative took shape. Matthew Shepard was killed by two men who he did not know—Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson—because he was gay. It was a hate crime, and it was deplorable.

As the news spread, celebrities and politicians around the country spoke out. President Clinton told journalists at the White House, “In our shock and grief one thing must remain clear: hate and prejudice are not American values.” The story of this anti-gay hate crime came to represent the very thing that many gay Americans feared America was at its worst: a place of deep bigotry, where violence against gay people is rampant, where a young man could be targeted and killed simply for being gay, and a country where there are whole cities and towns, maybe even whole regions, where gay people aren’t safe.

The death of Matthew Shepard became the most notorious anti-gay hate crime in American history. “Shepard is to gay rights what Emmett Till was to the civil rights movement,” as New York congressman Sean Patrick Maloney said.

But what if the story wasn’t true? What if Matthew Shepard wasn’t murdered for being gay, but rather for something more common—though equally tragic? And why did so many people refuse to believe it when investigative journalists discovered the truth?

Those were the questions on reporter Ben Kawaller’s mind when he went to Laramie earlier this month, where he interviewed residents, journalists, and former detectives who have a lot to say about the Matthew Shepard case and what really happened. Today, the real Matthew Shepard story and why the full truth is still important.

People

Matthew Shepard, Aaron McKinney, Russell Henderson, Steven Jimenez, Ben Koaler

Books

"The Book of Matt" by Steven Jimenez

Content Warnings:

None

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Matthew Shepard
Why do I have to be so ashamed? I mean, why can't I just say the truth? I mean, be who I am. I'm 35 years old. I want to take you back to 1997.

I'm so afraid to tell people. I mean, I just. In April of that year, Ellen DeGeneres was on the COVID of Time magazine declaring, yep, I'm gay. And then a few weeks later, her sitcom alter ego came out on television. Susan, I'm gay.

Bari Weiss
The episode was watched by 42 million people. And the next year, in 1998. Was that Danny? Mm hmm. Jealous?

Will and Grace
Honey, I don't need your man. I got George Clooney. Will and Grace premiered on NBC. Sorry, babe. He doesn't bat for your team.

Well, he hasn't seen me pitch. This was a watershed moment for gay representation in the pursuit of happiness. Mad about you, spin City, Chicago, Hope, Melrose Place, NYPD Blue, my so called life fired up the crew, profiler and high society. All these shows started to include out gay characters. The whole decade, really, that whole period consisted of a lot of landmark moments for gay americans, going back to May 1996.

Bari Weiss
The Supreme Court decided that Colorado's Second Amendment, which had denied gays and lesbians protections against discrimination, was actually unconstitutional. Then, in May 1998, we all know. That there is continuing discrimination against gays and lesbians. An executive order was signed by President Bill Clinton. If we're ever going to build one America, then all Americans, including you and.

Bill Clinton
Those whom you represent, have got to. Be a part of it. That made it illegal to discriminate based on sexual orientation in federal workplaces. There was just this general sense at the time that the gay rights movement in America was finally making real progress. And then something horrific happened.

Matthew Shepard
Matthew Shepard will be buried this Friday. He's the gentle young man from Wyoming who was savagely beaten, tied to a fence, and left to die. One late October night in 1998 in a little town called Laramie, Wyoming, a 21 year old college student named Matthew Shepard was killed. The one thing that's clear is that what happened to Matthew Shepard was horribly brutal. These people took him out and tortured him and hung him on a fence and battered his head in.

Bari Weiss
The details of the murder were brutal. Shepherd was pistol whipped 18 times. He was beaten. He was tied to the bottom of a cross hatched wooden fence in a remote part of town and he was left there unconscious to die. When he was found, some people said that he looked like a scarecrow.

One of the first responders said that Matthew's face had so much blood that the only place you could see his skin was where the path of his tears had fallen and washed it away. He died a few days later in a nearby hospital. In the weeks and months that followed, a narrative took shape. Tonight, the story the nation is talking about. A gay college student leaves a bar with two men he'd just met.

Will and Grace
Aaron and Russ said, let's pretend like we're gay. And Matthew Shepard was killed by two men he didn't know, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson because he was gay. From time to time, a single crime grabs the attention of the whole country. The latest example, the beating of a gay college student in Wyoming. The brutal incident provoked an outcry, candlelight vigils and new calls for tough measures to stop hate crimes.

Bari Weiss
It was a hate crime that was the story. And it was absolutely deplorable. I am so pissed off. As the news of his murder spread. I can't stop crying.

Celebrities and politicians around the country spoke out. I can't explain why Matthew Shepard's death has affected me so deeply. I just know that I have been sobbing for four days and I am so sick of crying. In our shock and grief, one thing must remain clear. Hate and prejudice are not american values.

Bill Clinton
The most critical one, perhaps, is education. The story of this anti gay hate crime in Laramie came to represent the very thing that many gay Americans and many straight ones feared. That America was at its worst, a place of deep bigotry where violence against gay people and other minorities is rampant. A country where a young man could be targeted and killed simply for his identity and a country where there are whole towns and cities, maybe even whole regions where people like Matthew Shepard aren't safe.

Bari Weiss
The death of Matthew Shepard became the most notorious anti gay hate crime in american history. Shepherd is to gay rights what Emmett Till was to the civil rights movement. That's not my line. That's New York representative Sean Patrick Maloney who said that in the aftermath of his murder. But what if the story, the story we all know about Matthew Shepard.

What if it wasn't true? What if Matthew Shepard wasn't murdered for being gay, but murdered for something far more common, though equally as tragic? And why, when some investigative journalists discovered that more complicated truth did so many people refuse to believe it? Those were the questions on Ben Koaler's mind when he went to Laramie earlier this month. He went there to interview Laramie residents who remember the Matthew Shepard murder and its fallout, as well as members of Laramie's small but vocal queer community.

Today on honestly, Ben Koala joins me for the real Matthew Shepard story and why the full truth? The whole complicated truth is still important. We'll be right back.

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specialoffer. All lowercase. That's shopify.com specialoffer. Hey, guys, Josh Hammer here, the host of America on Trial with Josh Hammer, a podcast for the first podcast network. Look, there are a lot of shows out there that are explaining the political news cycle, what's happening on the Hill, to this, to that.

Matthew Shepard
There are no other shows that are cutting straight to the point when it comes to the unprecedented law fair, debilitating and affecting the 2024 presidential election. We do all that every single day right here on America on trial with Josh Hammer. Subscribe and download your episodes wherever you get your podcast. It's America on trial with Josh Hammer.

Bari Weiss
Ben Koala, welcome to honestly, thank you, Barry. Thank you for having me. Okay, so you're just back in LA from a week in Laramie, Wyoming, and you were drawn there because of a story that's really important to you and, frankly, is really important to anyone that grew up gay in America. So maybe let's start there. Let's talk about who you were when you first learned about Matthew Shepard's death and how the story of it impacted you.

Matthew Shepard
I was 14 when Matthew Shepard was killed. I was in 8th grade. I was maybe six months away from coming out of the closet myself. I may have been dating my friend Melissa at the time. And, you know, I don't remember sort of the moment that I heard about this.

But I guess my earliest memory associated with it is we had this assembly and the intent and the message of it was very clear. It was, we see you here as all deserving respect. And this is a place that's not like this other place where this horrible thing happened. And at the time, that was very moving to me. I remember hearing about it and I remember feeling very scared.

Bari Weiss
This was the kind of thing that could happen in America if you were gay. Did you feel that way? I felt like, thank God I'm in New York where, you know, I mean, I was a very sort of sheltered theater kid anyway. I mean, there was plenty of homophobia in New York City, but I wasn't experiencing it. But I really did have this feeling of like, oh, well, thank God I am not in one of these wretched places in this country.

Matthew Shepard
And, I mean, this was a time when you had widespread homophobia being vocalized by politicians and religious leaders. So what happened to Matthew felt like the logical outgrowth of the landscape we were in. I mean, it was a really believable story. But, yeah, it shifted my sense of what being gay meant and how, well, it wasn't just that I was part of a cool new minority group. There was plenty of that.

And I really enjoyed that when I came out. But I felt like, oh, I'm persecuted. And like I said, there was reason to feel that I was part of a minority that did not have equal rights. But it was the sense that if I ventured out of New York I could be met with deadly force if I ever went to the heartland of America. So I think it made me kind of look down on huge swaths of the country.

Bari Weiss
So you and I both grew up on this very particular story of why Matthew Shepard was killed, how he was killed. And that was sort of what everyone thought. No one questioned that at all. And Matthew Shepard, around this time of the year, around Pride month, was talked about. And it was sort of remembered as this horrific, tragic case of what happens when gay hate is allowed to flourish in this country.

Now, let's start with the conventional wisdom. What is the official narrative of what happened to Matthew Shepard on October 6, 1998? So the story everyone knows about Matthew Shepard as it was initially reported and also as it's represented in the Laramie project, which was a play initially in New York that was later turned into a movie for HBO. That story is basically that Matthew Shepard was at the fireside bar. Hes approached by two men, Aaron McKinney, Russell Henderson, both around his age.

Matthew Shepard
Either Matthew hits on them or they decide to lure him outside by pretending to be gay. But they pick on him because he is weak looking, and theyre big and strong. And they drive him to a remote part of town. They tie him to a fence, they bludgeon him, and they leave him there to die. Hes found some 18 hours later and dies several days after from the injuries of that attack.

Bari Weiss
When does that narrative sort of come under scrutiny? When do people start to question it? Well, most of what I just said is true in terms of what happened to him. The misunderstanding is the motive. So the origin story of the revised history probably starts around 2000 when Steven Jimenez, whos a gay journalist, comes to Laramie.

Matthew Shepard
He's researching a screenplay about Matthew Shepard. And as far as Jimenez knows, Matthew was killed for being gay. He doesn't have any more information than any of the rest of us, but he was able to establish a rapport with the lead prosecutor of the case. And this guy eventually lets him in on what he discovered about the role of drugs in the murder. And then nine years later, Jimenez publishes the Book of Matt, which is the culmination of like 13 years of investigation into this case.

I sat down with him and he sort of walked me through the real. Story of what happened immediately after the crime happened. Aaron McKinney and his girlfriend, Kristen Price, you know, they were trying to come up with something, something plausible that something was done to Aaron and that he was somehow defending himself. It's a ridiculous idea, this idea of a gay panic defense. That was one thing.

Bill Clinton
There were calls made by friends of matts, Walt Bolden and Alex Trout, who began calling gay organizations first in the Rocky Mountain area and calling some newspapers and saying, we think that this is going to be swept under the carpet. And we think that it was a hate crime. We think he was targeted because he was gay. There are a variety of other iterations that came after that. But I would say by and large, it was an alibi that essentially Aaron McKinney and his girlfriend came up with that Matt had hit on him in the bar and then eventually grabbed him in the vehicle.

That was one. And the other is that before the police had even begun an investigation, gay organizations were called and the media was called. And so the story got out on Associated Press before anyone knew what had happened. Although a very horrific and tragic case, it was a very simple case. It should have been a very simple case.

Matthew Shepard
I also talked to Ben Fritzen, who was a former detective in Laramie who was one of the investigators of Matthew's murder. But as it progressed, you had two of Matthew Shepard's friends who went public very quickly, basically saying, you know, this is what happened to our friend. Our friend is gay. This is why it happened to him. And it spread like wildfire from there.

Will and Grace
It was frantic. It was a mess. You started getting all the reporters in all of the protest group, whether it was pro gay groups, anti gay, pro death penalty, anti death penalty, a little bit of everything. And it basically turned into a circus. It made the job very, very difficult.

Bari Weiss
So this detective Fritzen, along with Jimenez, told you that the hate crime narrative started simply because two of Matthew's friends were calling around saying that this was a hate crime. It was a bunch of things. The narrative is really coming from both sides. After the murder, Erin McKinney's girlfriend, Christian Price, concocts this story. What she tells investigators, and what I think she tells the press, actually, is that this murder happened because Matthew was flirting with Aaron, and Aaron lost it and, you know, wanted to teach him a lesson not to come on to.

So sort of like a gay panic. That's literally what it was. I mean, we were, I guess, at a time in America where people thought, including Aaron's defense attorney, thought that this would help him, that it was gay panic. You know, what would you do, right? Bludgeon someone to death, obviously, yeah.

Will and Grace
You know, I don't completely remember how they put it in court, but it was basically that Matthew was flirting with them. He was grabbing McKinney's knees or groin area, and McKinney just lost it because he was homophobic, and it just outraged him, and he flew off the handle, and that's why it happened. I think that was basically their narrative. You know, it's the attorney's job to get their client acquitted any way that they can. And I think at that point, they were just grasping at straws, trying to figure out anything that they could find to get sympathy from jurors.

Not that it's an excuse for a homicide, but just anything that they could come up with. I was interviewing Kristen. Another detective was interviewing chasity, so. And Ben, who is chasity? She is Russell Henderson's girlfriend, and she'd been taken into questioning as well.

Matthew Shepard
And basically, these two girlfriends, chastity and Kristen, have identical stories. I learned from Ben, the investigator, that if you are colluding, you want to get your stories similar, but, like, you don't want them to be identical. That apparently was the giveaway here. And we would occasionally take breaks, you know, give them a chance to stretch. We would take notes, compare notes.

Will and Grace
And we found out in talking to the other detective, their stories were absolutely identical down to the minute and it's like, well, that's not right. This is all rehearsed, you know, talking to Kristen. And she had her baby with her, and the baby was getting kind of fussy. So, you know, we had another detective take care of the baby, another mom, so the kid would be in good hands. And I basically told Kristen, I said, you know, it's kind of rough not having your kid like this, isn't it?

And she said, yeah. I said, that's something you're gonna have to think about, because that might be permanent. You're gonna have to help us out and tell us the truth. And that's kind of when she folded and told me basically what happened at that point. I understand the motivation of McKinney's girlfriend, price, in the cultural context of the time, which is kind of amazing to think about now.

Bari Weiss
They thought it would help. What is the motivation of Matthew's friends? Why are they saying it's a hate crime? No, I talked to Walt Bolden, who was one of the guys who was putting forth this narrative. He was one of Matthew's friends.

First Responder
I said that they had a responsibility to pass hate crime legislation because this was a hate crime. And for them to not say it was a hate crime was just a sham. And I don't think I used those words, but that was the gist of what I was saying. And that they couldn't call it a robbery, and they couldn't call it something it wasn't. Nobody was going to pay attention to beating up fag, and it was going to be brushed under the rug, called a robbery, and forgotten about.

And I didn't want it forgotten about. It needed to be addressed, because everything was constantly being swept under the rug, and Matt deserved better than that. And he talked about how difficult it was to be gay in Wyoming. This was a period where bashing a fag or rolling a queer when you got drunk in a bar was a common thing, and people didn't even question it. So it wasn't a good time to be gay, much less to be adolescent gay in a small town, and how.

Matthew Shepard
The struggles that Matt had being bullied for being gay. So I sort of started to understand while I was talking to this guy that when that's the context that you're living in and something like this happens, it just seems sort of logical to think, oh, this must have been about that. And so what they do is they start calling gay organizations, they start calling the press, and this narrative starts getting propagated. You know, I was really prepared to come at this guy. And I really was prepared to think of him as the villain of this story.

And maybe I can't defend what he did. I mean, he was propagating something that he did not know to be true. And he was doing it so vociferously. And I asked him, how did you know what the motive was? And he just could not entertain for a moment the idea that it could have had anything to do with anything else.

I asked him, have you ever let yourself wonder, was this not a hate crime? Nope. He's not even sort of going there. And I asked him about Matt's drug use and he wrote off the whole thing the way you would smoking pot in college. He said something like, it's just like.

First Responder
People go through different phases and different periods, I guess. Drinking beer wasn't a big issue. Drinking alcohol wasn't a big issue. Smoking some pot wasn't a big issue. And so to say that Matt was somehow unusual because he was doing this is bogus.

Because if he really found out how many people on campus were probably doing it just as a regular course of their life, it wasn't unusual. And was he addict? Was he doing some form of drug? Doing some form of drug. Was he selling drugs?

No, I don't believe that even in a heartbeat. Does that mean he wasn't sharing them? I don't know how often. He never talked to me about his drugs and I never asked. He completely discarded the idea that he would be selling drugs.

Matthew Shepard
And this is someone who told me that he thought of Matt as a son. And he just struck me as this Arthur Miller like character who was so in denial about this that he just couldn't face what actually was true about this kid. You know, Matt struggled with addiction and was involved in this sort of criminal underworld. First of all, one of the key facts that if you go back and look at news articles from every major news organization in the country you'll find that it was reported that Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson and Matthew Shepard were strangers. Okay, they were not strangers.

Bill Clinton
Russell Henderson had never met Matthew before the night of the crime. But Aaron McKinney had a relationship with Matthew. They had a social relationship. They were both involved with methamphetamine. Aaron, in particular, had been addicted for three years.

He was dealing and was deep into it. Matthew had also dabbled quite a bit with methamphetamine. And in Matthew's case, it began when Matthew was living in Denver prior to his move to Laramie. Aaron and Matt did not meet in Laramie. They had met in Denver prior to Matt even moving to Laramie.

Matthew Shepard
One of the ways that they were connected was through this guy named Doc O'Connor. He owned a limousine service that Matthew frequently used, but he was also sort of this, like, Fagan like character who, like, took these boys under his wing. And he was an older guy who, you know, enjoyed the company of younger men. And he would throw these wild bisexual sex parties, and Matthew would be at these things, and so would Aaron. And I have people on record saying that they saw them together getting handsy with each other.

So not only did they know each. Other, but were they sleeping together? Yes. I mean, Jimenez has sources on record, not anonymous sources. There's a guy who used to date Matthew, and he.

And Matt and Aaron had threesomes together, or at least one threesome together. I mean, I have multiple sources, okay, that had sexual encounters with Aaron McKinney, whether it was just with Aaron Solo or it was a threesome, including a boyfriend of Matt's who actually had a threesome with Matt. Aaron and Matt's boyfriend. So not only did they know each other, but you're saying that Aaron himself was either bisexual or. Yes.

Aaron was characterized to me by Ben Fritzen, the investigator, as a closeted bisexual. You know, I knew Aaron, and Aaron was bisexual. I knew at least that much. How did you know that? From other police dealings and compromising positions he was found in.

Will and Grace
Okay, yeah, so we knew about that. So when I heard, you know, the narrative on the hate crime, it's like, yeah, that doesn't make any sense.

Bari Weiss
Well, I think the fact that he was closeted sort of plays into the idea that he was. I don't even know how much credence to lend this, but that he was exhibiting some kind of internalized homophobia just because he was bisexual doesn't mean he wasn't acting out of some kind of internalized homophobia. Right? Sure, maybe. I mean, that's a possibility.

Matthew Shepard
But I think the other evidence about his and Matthew's relationship to drugs points us in a different direction. I was, many years ago, involved in the escort business, gay escort. And I spoke with someone else, a guy named Mike Jones, who ran in the same circles as Matthew. At the time when Matthew was living. In Denver, I was not around the most pleasant people.

Mike Jones
Sometimes I consider them seedy people, because, unfortunately, in all that lifestyle involves drugs. And that's when my meeting or, you know, coming across Matthew happened. Do you remember the first time you encountered him? I remember it was at a Hampden inn. Okay, that's the first time because you have to understand, back then, the gay community in Denver was small and it was very closeted.

So there was a lot of sex parties. And in those sex parties, drugs were prevalent. So, you know, I would go to those parties and that's where I met Matthew the first time. Yeah. And these were parties where there was meth use, I assume.

Matthew Shepard
Is that fair to say? Cocaine? Yeah. I saw Matt at some drug dealers houses also. And that's the scariest part of all of them because I saw people getting shot, I saw people getting stabbed.

Mike Jones
It's a very dangerous environment to be in. So what did you learn about what Aaron was looking for that night and why he approached Matthew at the fireside bar? Well, Steven told me that Aaron was in debt and he suspected that Matthew had access to either meth or to money earned selling meth. Aaron McKinney was interested in one of two things. He either wanted the drug haul, okay, he wanted to get his hand on the 6oz or he wanted the money that was going to come with the 6oz.

Bill Clinton
And they had bought and sold from each other previously. And that night, according to Jimenez, Matthew, or the dealers that he ran with, was expecting a shipment of meth that was to be dropped off in Laramie that night. There was a shipment of methamphetamine coming and it was a regular shipment. These shipments usually came like every two weeks. And in this case, this was being handled by a group of friends of Matt's from Denver.

Bari Weiss
And how did Jimenez find out the details of this story? He spoke with over 100 sources, including both Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney, and a whole bunch of people who knew them. What I'll tell you first is there was a co worker of Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson who worked with them for the same roofing company. He became an important source because he was in the network of places that they went that night. They went to several people's houses in addition to having met at the bar.

Bill Clinton
Okay. And one of the reasons im just going to skip to Aaron for a second is Aaron acknowledged to me what he was looking for, that he was looking for the meth or the money. One of Aarons suppliers that he had worked for for a couple of years had been arrested on interstate drug trafficking charges in Nevada and he had pled guilty, but he had not been sentenced yet. And that night they went to his house in Laramie as well. Aaron was afraid of that person.

Some of Aaron's other friends, Kristen, Russell, the rest of them were also afraid of this guy. And so they went to his house. They went to his house. Only Aaron went inside, okay. And the rest stayed in the vehicle.

But everyone that I know that was involved on the drug dealing side, on both sides, okay, has admitted that that's what was going on that night. So basically, Aaron and his group are sort of going around town looking for ways they can get drugs or money because he's financially stressed and because it sounds like he's sort of an addict himself. No, he's definitely an addict. I mean, he's. Yes, he'd been doing math for about three years, and he was out of his mind.

Matthew Shepard
And Aaron was in debt, behind in rent, had a wife and kids to support and wanted to get his hands on that shipment or the money. You know, Aaron was trying to persuade Matt into advancing him some drugs, and Aaron would pay him the money later, and Matt wouldn't do it. Matt wanted the money, or he wouldn't give him the drugs. So Aaron was pissed off. And that's not the first time Aaron got pissed off at Matt.

Bill Clinton
Aaron, like I said, was flying by the seat of his pants. He always owed people money. You know, he would advance drugs and then would be in a complete rage. In fact, the night before the crime happened, Aaron broke into his cousin's home in Laramie because he was looking for a guy whose name is Monty Durand. And I met Monty, and Aaron came storming into the house.

Is Monty here? And Monty was in the house. And Aaron just completely lunged on him and attacked him. And this was the night before the attack on shepherd. So look at the night of the attack on Matthew.

Right? He brutally beats Matthew and leaves him tied to the fence within a very short time, goes to downtown Laramie, they park the vehicle, and he gets into a fight with two hispanic guys and again takes the gun and cracks the guy's head open. He also, during the course of the attack on Matthew, when Russell Henderson tried to intervene, he struck Russell across the face with the. 357 Magnum. And Russell got nine stitches at the hospital that night.

So the fact that he attacked four people, obviously Matthews was the most severe. But you look at one of the hispanic guys and look at the scar on his head. I mean, he was out of his mind.

Bari Weiss
Is there any indication that the murder of Matthew Shepard that night is like a meth induced psychosis? To me, there's no indication that it's anything other than a meth induced psychosis. Aaron had been doing meth for a week, barely sleeping. And people who study meth will tell you that when you do it regularly, and by this point, he had been doing it regularly for three years you start to lose your mind. And if you're in a high pressure situation like you've decided to rob a rival drug dealer to pay off your debts, you're also highly volatile.

Bill Clinton
Aaron owed people money. He owed a couple of his suppliers money. The crime happened on October 6. He hadn't paid rent for October. He had a young baby and a girlfriend that he was supporting.

So Aaron was under a lot of pressure. Aaron had also been up on meth for a week. He used meth the day before the crime, on Monday, before going to work. He used it on Tuesday. And so he was an addiction.

Bari Weiss
The detective that you spoke to, Ben Fritzen when you asked him about Stevens reporting that this is a drug motivated money motivated crime, not a hate crime, where does he stand on that? Yes, he agrees with that. It was about drugs, pretty plain and simple. It was about methamphetamine and, you know, the money behind it and Aaron trying to get his hands on more of it. You know, keeping in mind, prior to this case, I only knew one of the parties.

Will and Grace
I knew Aaron McKinney very well because I'd arrested him a few times. I dealt with him quite a bit. But, you know, when we got called out to work at the crime scene where Matthew Shepard was found, you know, some of the things that jump out immediately is no wallet, no identification, no shoes. Kind of dumped in a remote area. It's not so remote anymore.

But at the time, it was a very dark, sparsely populated area and pretty much everything pointed to robbery. At that point, if so many people, Ben knew Aaron and knew Matthew and essentially knew the truth. Like, if you have small business owners saying, yeah, I saw them together getting hands against a limousine. Like, why did this other narrative take over and take over so definitively and fully? So much so that I think if you went up to a random person on the street and asked them Matthew Shepard they would say the words hate crime.

Matthew Shepard
I mean, I do think a lot of it has to do with the Laramie project. There's a lot of money involved in the Laramie project. People made a lot of money off of that. It's a really good story. I mean, it's a devastating play.

It just happens to be fiction or largely fiction. The media really wasn't interested in reporting it. It was completely one sided all the way through. I did an interview, I think, for the oxygen network and they managed to cut enough of my words out and put things together to where I was pretty much agreeing with the whole hate crime thing. It was pretty pathetic job.

Will and Grace
You know, it's not like I actively go out and campaign against drug usage or something like that, but I think it's really important that people know that it was about drugs and not about a hate crime and that drugs, especially methamphetamine and things like that, that's what happens when you use it and you deal with it.

Bari Weiss
After the break. Hallermy's reputation was forever stained by this crime and why so few people were willing to change their minds in the face of new evidence. Stay with us. This crime happened 26 years ago, but it sounds, from what you saw, that it impacted the town of Laramie for years to come, including today. Tell me about the impact that it's had on the town's reputation and on the people you spoke to who still live there.

Matthew Shepard
Yeah, I mean, there was real resentment against how it had been branded as the anti gay hate crime town. Well, I think originally it pretty much turned the town upside down, you know, with all the media coverage, because, like I'd said, it was a mess. Laramie got a bad rap from it. You know, Laramie, Wyoming, rural town, not on the coast. Like, was there any truth to that?

Bari Weiss
Was it a homophobic town? Well, I mean, it was the nineties. I mean, you can find homophobia. You can find bigotry anywhere. You can find it today.

Matthew Shepard
Anywhere. I will say Laramie is probably the most liberal town in Wyoming, given that it's where the University of Wyoming is. So it was somewhat ironic that of all places, it should be Laramie branded as this hotbed of intolerance. I've always looked at Laramie as being very tolerant for different ethnic people, sexual orientation, all that. And that's mostly because of the university, you know, I mean, we have a good sized university population here, and it's a very diverse town.

Will and Grace
I think a lot of people in the army, general, I think there's an awful lot of distrust in the media. No, because of that, the Laramie project wasn't really so much about Laramie. Laramie was a stand in for small town America, for rural America in general, at least for me. I didn't walk away being like, oh, Laramie is specifically horrible because it seemed to point to a widespread problem. So this play that starts in New York called the Laramie Project, right.

Bari Weiss
It starts as a play in New York, and it later becomes a movie on HBO, which was really just gut wrenching and sort of paints the people of Laramie as kind of backward Yokel rednecks. Can you remind people about this play and later the movie and the impact that it had? So basically what happened is a team of New York actors and producers came to Laramie after Matthew's death to make a theater production based on interviews that they conducted with people in the town. This movie, which has major actors like Laura Linney, Steve Buscemi. To me, this became the account of record.

Matthew Shepard
I think that's fair. And it was HBO, but one of the guys I spoke to, Mike Jones, this is the guy I spoke to in Denver, who knew Matthew. He actually knew the creator, writer director of the play, Moises Kaufman, personally. And he told me that Kaufman admitted to embellishing the story. Well, Moises Kaufman, who wrote that play, I had quite a few dealings with him.

Mike Jones
Very nice guy. You know, I do remember spending time with him, talking about stuff, and more or less admitted that he had to. This happens almost in any show or movie. There's some embellishment. Okay, well, some embellishment versus.

Well, yes, but, you know, you want to make the story as interesting as possible. So, you know. Well, but the whole basis of the play is, let's go, go to this town where this hate crime happened. I mean, the entire. So do you remember him saying to you, like, well, this isn't really what happened, but this is what we're doing for the play.

I just. I more or less remember the embellishment part. Like he had said, I have to make the story just a little bit bigger. And I should note that we tried to reach out to Moises Kaufman, the creator of the Laramie project, for comment, but we never heard back. I also talked to Ben Fritzen about it, his recollection of the play, the production of the play, and how it affected Laramie.

Matthew Shepard
Did you see the Laramie project? Thought it was a joke. If you could say one thing to the producers of the Laramie project or to any of the media that has pushed this narrative, what would that be? I guess I would say, well, for one, they ought to be ashamed of themselves. They did a terrible job, and they should have listened to everything and done a little bit of investigating instead of run with their own narrative.

Will and Grace
You can go a lot of different places around the country or even outside of the country and bring up Laramie, and that's usually the first thing that pops up. It's like, oh, yeah, isn't that where this happened? You know, it almost makes it sound like the residents are a bunch of anti gay, homophobic, redneck Hicks, which couldn't be further from the truth.

Matthew Shepard
I also got a sort of resignation from a lot of people. You know, like, oh, this is what they do. You know, the media comes in and they tell whatever story they want. There's so much distrust because of this story. I think that they were very disappointed in it.

I mean, I spoke to a former commissioner who was living in Laramie at the time of Matthew Shepard's murder, a woman named Terry Jones, and she was really disappointed by this play. It was so obviously slanted and didn't show what Laramie's really like. Was there any resentment in the wake of the Laramie project or just the story in general towards city people coming from New York and deposit? Oh, I think there was absolutely some resentment of that because they just flooded in here, and they already had a preconceived notion of what happened. Do you feel like most people in Laramie know the truth of what happened?

I think that probably the majority of people know. Why do you think this isn't more broadly known?

Because I think that when people come and do interviews, they're very selective in who they talk to because they have a narrative that they want. Terry also mentioned the organization that Matthew's family started. It's called the Matthew Shepard foundation, and it does these educational initiatives and other pro LGBTQ work. Do you see anything redeeming about the work that they've done? I haven't paid much attention to the Matthew Shepard foundation because I think that his mother put that together, and she lives very, very nicely on the fact that she uses her son as a martyr.

Do you feel like Laramie is owed an apology? In many ways I do, because the whole thing, I feel, like, misrepresented Laramie. Laramie needs to be allowed to just move on. And it's not to say that Matthew Shepard was bad. That's not the point.

It's just we need to move on.

Bari Weiss
So then a different kind of journalist would say, this is not worth it. Why did Jimenez keep working on this for 13 years when it was so obviously hurting his reputation? And frankly, I can imagine, as a gay journalist, maybe pissing off, like, his social circles and his friends. Why did he keep pursuing it? He's told me that he felt the truth was important to him, and I believe him.

Matthew Shepard
I would imagine that he established relationships with a lot of the people in Laramie and felt an obligation to tell what really happened, considering the way that they've been misapprehended by the world. There was something that I felt there needed to be a lasting record of what the case was really about. Because if Moises Kaufman could say that I practiced bad journalism, I felt that the public deserved more than the Laramie project as at least one lasting record of the case. The book comes out. Jimenez's book comes out in what year?

Bari Weiss
Again? 2013. Okay. It's 2024 now. It's more than ten years later.

What is the public perception of Steven Jimenez's book today? Well, I can tell you about how people in Laramie, queer people in Laramie, felt about it, because I interviewed a whole bunch of them at Laramie's Pride fest. I think that it was an interesting read. My chief emotion was and reaction was just using Matt's death as a talking piece for certain social issues, I think certainly can be beneficial, but I think it ended up being somewhat harmful. And I think that at that time, that book was written for an audience of folks who don't know Matt or were connected to Matt or this community to sort of rehash the details of the event.

Matthew Shepard
I guess I think about it this way, like, if someone in your family died, and maybe the circumstances were unclear, it would be deeply offensive if your neighbors started hypothesizing and gossiping about what happened. Is there any part of you that thinks that there could be something to these alternate expressions? That this wasn't about homophobia, but was about drugs or was about money or had you heard that in my. I don't want to spring this on. I know.

Laramie Resident
I know about it. There's different theories, and there's been some recent. In recent years, some people that just have this strange obsession with trying to prove that, no, there was nothing homophobic. It was just a drug deal. And I don't understand why people would want to discredit, change.

It doesn't like what's to be had. By trying to have this forensic evidence we uncovered that shows that actually it was just about drugs. I don't get it. Is that worthwhile simply based on the fact that it may be true? I think that there's a point when you as a person should look around and see, like, read the room.

The understanding of what happened to Matthew means a lot to a lot of people, so just leave it alone. Even if there was some amount of drug deal gone wrong involved, it doesn't matter. Read the room. That's not what matters at this point. What matters is the movement kind of.

That has come out of what happened. So it's kind of like, just let it go. People in this city seem to be somewhat split over what actually happened. There are some people who say it was hate crime, and then there are people who say, no, this was about drugs and a robbery over drugs and drug money. Have you heard that?

Matthew Shepard
Oh, absolutely. You've heard that? Yeah. I don't agree that it wasn't a hate crime. I think it was pretty clear, just if someone looks at the entire incident and the way it was staged that there's no way it wasn't intended to be a statement, the cruelty of what was done.

No, I don't think it was anything but a hate crime. That answers your question pretty directly. I don't think there's very many people in the community that you're among right now that would agree with what you're pushing, and I would say very forcefully that the Matthew Shepard incident has provided an incredible amount of strength to the lgbt community in Laramie and Albany county and actually throughout the world. I think that's the legacy that we will always remember, regardless of other folks trying to push an agenda or a version of the story that eliminates or reduces that.

Bari Weiss
Ben, what ended up happening to Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson? The short answer is they're both serving life sentences. But, you know, another piece of this story is that Russell Henderson, who was not on meth or on as much meth anyway, and Russell was more or less a bystander. I mean, he did tie Matthew up. He is guilty of that.

Matthew Shepard
And he didn't stop Aaron. But Russell was also terrified of Aaron. You know, Aaron attacked four people that night after attacking Matthew. He and Russell Henderson had a run in with these two young guys who were, I think, vandalizing something, and then there was another attack that happened. And so he attacked Matthew.

He attacked those two guys. And the fourth person he attacks is Russell himself. He pistol whipped Russell across the face when Russell tried to stop him, and then Russell stopped trying to stop him. Then at that point, Russell did not interfere because he was terrified of this guy. Aaron, unlike Russell, had an extensive criminal past, and Russell, unlike Aaron, has expressed a genuine remorse for this and responsibility.

I mean, he has said that he's where he belongs. But, you know, there's a part in Jimenez's book where a guard says, you know, what happened with this guy? He just doesn't belong here. You know, the idea that, like, they should both be serving the same sentence, that Russell Henderson should be serving the same sentence as the guy who actually murdered Matthew is, I think, pretty troubling. Jimenez also reveals in this book that basically the reason that Russell's in this situation is because he was pressured into accepting a plea deal under threat of the death penalty because the county didn't have enough money for two trials.

Bari Weiss
So did the jury not know these facts? No. And a lot of this had to do with the fact that a lot of these revelations weren't known until Jimenez explored them. Investigators had everything they needed to convict. To convict.

Matthew Shepard
Aaron Russell took this plea deal. They had admissions of it, and they had. There was just no sort of reason for them to continue to investigate something, considering they could get what they wanted, meaning these convictions, these sentences. But, yeah, I mean, Russell really had bad representation, and his grandmother actually encouraged him to take this plea deal because they were terrified of him getting the death penalty. So there was no trial for all of this stuff to come out.

Bari Weiss
You know, Ben, we're talking here kind of at the tail end of pride. And I can imagine that there are listeners hearing what you're saying and shaking their head and maybe wanting to throw their phone across the room saying, this reporting is not that fair. Like, you came to Laramie with your mind already made up about what actually happened to Matthew Shepard and, like, frankly, like a kid was killed. Let sleeping dogs lie. What do you say to that?

That skeptical listener? Well, I mean, look, you should never be 1000% certain about anything, but I did reach out to a number of people and organizations that had touted this idea that this was a hate crime, including the Matthew Shepard foundation. They didn't want to talk to me. Not so surprisingly, I did speak to Walt Bolden, who was one of the people putting forth this narrative. And I guess I'm always open to changing my mind if there's part of this story I haven't heard.

Matthew Shepard
But all of the people sort of coming out to defend the official, original story, none of them have offered compelling evidence or anything to suggest that what Jimenez has reported isn't true or trustworthy. No, I think the best argument that this was a hate crime, I don't think it's very good. But it's the best one, I think, is that it's hard to imagine. Maybe it's hard to imagine Aaron McKinney doing to a straight man what he did to Matthew. And of course, like I said, the fact that his own defense was that he did it because Matthew came onto him.

I mean, that shows that Matt's sexuality meant something to him. You know, it was enough that someone thought to, like, hey, maybe we can pin it on the fact that he's a fag. You know? I mean, so there is that. So, you know, if you're comfortable reading the minds and motives of a criminal strung out on meth who's trying to get himself off, you call it a hate crime if you like.

The hate crime story we were all told left so much out that we now know isn't maybe true, but is demonstrably true. They knew each other. I mean, like, it's just, I don't know how you can not believe that after hearing firsthand evidence of people saying they knew each other. I knew them. We all had sex together.

I mean, like, what would the motive be otherwise? These are people who loved Matthew, who are saying these things. So, you know, I didn't go to Laramie to Redo Jimenez's investigation. I went there because I'm in, interested in how people living in Laramie feel about these conflicting narratives. Who believes what and why.

Bari Weiss
Now that you've been there, why do you think all these years later that people cling to the narrative that Matthew Shepard was killed simply because he was gay? Tribalism. I struck it up in a coffee shop with a gay girl around my age, and she told me that she thought this was about drugs. I think she was from Laramie, but she didn't want to go on record and she definitely didn't want to go on camera. She said it felt wrong in her heart.

Matthew Shepard
And I get that because people feel like, well, you know, even if this wasn't an anti gay hate crime, there was such virulent homophobia in the nineties that surely this represented something seriously sick in our society. And maybe it did. I mean, it did actually represent something sick in our society. But I think that thing was meth, not bigotry. And, in fact, meth has claimed a whole lot more gay lives than homophobia has, at least if you look at hate crime statistics.

And there were apparently three anti gay murders in America that year, according to the FBI. I don't want to venture to guess how many gay men died of or people died of using meth, but it was more than three. Looking at this story from the distance of the more than 20 years since then, is there any, and I don't mean this in a pat way, but is there any good that's come out of this horrible crime, this horrible murder and the aftermath of all of it? I mean, I guess that depends on what you think of as good. I mean, there are people that will say that because we have a hate crime law, a federal hate crime law named after Matthew Shepard that there's something redeeming about this.

I don't. Sorry if I'm missing something. I've never sort of understood the argument that this murder demonstrated the need for hate crime legislation. I mean, we have two men serving life sentences for this murder, and, in fact, the only reason that Aaron McKinney didn't get the death sentence is because the shepherd family asked for mercy. So I just don't know what more could have been done.

There are a lot of people I spoke to who felt like Matthew Shepard's death and everything that came after humanized gay people and brought attention to the dangers of being gay in America. But I don't credit Matthew Shepard's death with this. I credit will and grace, more or less. And that was something that Steven and I kind of disagreed about a bit. It really did a lot of good.

Bill Clinton
When I say it, I'm not talking about the murder. What I'm saying is I think that there was a lot more sensitivity to gay people, you know, gay, lesbian people, LGBTQ people feeling unsafe in certain environments. You know, I think that there were people maybe who really, you know, didn't know gay people. And somehow I think this just awakens something at a very deep human level about someone being victimized that did raise some consciousness and awareness in the public. Okay.

But the thing is, is something was lost, too, because there was also an opportunity to have a conversation that was more complicated. I just believe that the more complicated truth is more meaningful over the long haul and over the long stretch. It's a much more important conversation to me to talk about the complicated human motives behind something rather than, you know, two rednecks, strangers, hated gay people, walked in, targeted him because he looked gay, and took him out and beat him to death because he was gay. That's just not the truth. Ben, early in this conversation, when you were reflecting back on being in 8th grade and hearing about this story in progressive New York and a progressive school and a progressive family, one of the things that you thought to yourself is, thank God I'm not from a place like Laramie.

Bari Weiss
What effect did this story have on that kind of urban rural divide? Or maybe the perception of urban people about rural places, especially when it comes to gay people? And has that changed in the past 26 years? Well, I think we would have had that urban rural divide without the Matthew Shepard case, but I don't think it was good for it. It made me think that we weren't just sort of up against homophobia, but that we were up against violence and that there was a real possibility that if you went into parts of America, you were gonna be killed.

Matthew Shepard
Now, arguably, that's as irrational as getting freaked out about the possibility of getting killed whenever you hear about any murder. For me, it made me think of places like Laramie, Wyoming. Places like Wyoming, places outside of big cities as benighted, backwards, dangerous, ignorant. I don't think that was good for America. And you ask about how things have changed, and I will say, laramie, Wyoming.

Now, you walk down the street, and maybe this is not so surprising, because, as I said, this was always one of the more liberal places in Wyoming. But there were all sorts of progress flags everywhere. That's the gay pride flag, plus the trans stuff and the arrows and the circles and all the bells and whistles. There was an in this house sign I saw, or one of those. But I mean, there was a really palpable queerness to Laramie.

Probably had something to do with the fact that it was June, it was pride month, so there were all these posters around, but there was a thriving queer scene there, oddly, with very few gay men, it was like 90% women, so there was no one to fall in love with there, which was unfortunate. But that certainly upended my expectation that there were going to be eight queer people doing a. Doing a little queer celebration here. They turned out a crowd. So, Ben, just, you know, as we wrap up this conversation, what do you take away from all of this story and your time in Laramie?

Bari Weiss
I mean, you said in the beginning of this conversation that you went there because you believe in truth for the sake of truth, which is really what journalism is about. So what is the value of truth for the sake of truth? It seems like a weird thing to have to defend. It seems sort of self evident that it's better to believe something true than not true. I'll say this, no one ever taught me about meth the way I was taught about safe sex, for instance.

Matthew Shepard
It continues to be a blight on the gay community. It's sort of this unspoken plague that is in our community, and it leads people to do very risky things. It leads people to end up contracting HIV, for instance. And it's not something that we educate gay people about. I was offered meth once in my twenties, and it's only dumb luck that it didn't happen in person.

This was like, online at like three in the morning, and thankfully I was, like, in for the night. But had it been in person, I'm not sure I'd be alive today because it's apparently fabulous and irresistible and completely ruins your life. You know, when we talk about, like, truth for the sake of truth, I'd say that it's about more than just like an academic exercise. When we dont follow the facts, we misunderstand reality. And I think that can have severe consequences.

So thats why I think its important that we follow truth for its own sake.

Bill Clinton
I think it could be argued that had we spoken truthfully about this and the public became aware of what can happen with meth use things like meth induced psychosis, which is a real thing, what meth does to brain chemistry and the way people change, that. Perhaps we might have become a more educated public about meth earlier, instead of it happening because of breaking bad. You know, maybe it would have been something that journalists would have spoken about earlier. And to be honest with you, coming on the heels of AIDS, I understand why members of the community didn't really want to talk about it because it felt like a little bit of a secret, which is exactly how it was in Laramie at the beginning. At the time this crime happened, when the media descended on Laramie, people knew that they were already starting to have a serious meth problem there, but people didn't want to talk about it.

It was kind of a shameful secret. And I think there's a little bit of a comparison, I would say, between. Between that microcosm and the macrocosm of what was going on with meth in America. I think that there was just a lot of foolishness on the parts of all the people involved. And that just really makes me sad.

Will and Grace
Very, very tragic. Very sad. Especially when a kid that age loses his life. I mean, there is just absolutely nothing good about it. It's just the narrative was wrong on.

It doesn't take away the tragedy, you know, or the parents pain or the sorrow, you know, losing a kid is losing a kid. It's just, unfortunately, they happen. And it's just that it happened for this reason, not this reason.

Bari Weiss
Ben Koaler, thank you so much for joining me on honestly today, and thanks for going to Laramie to report this story. Thanks, Barry, and thank you for having me.

Thanks for listening. If you liked this episode, if it made you rethink how the media can shape narratives or how identity can drive the way we think about things and actually override the truth, that's the point. That's what we do here. We try and pursue the truth with independence, with fearlessness, and with a commitment to not myth, but reality. So share this conversation with your friends and family and use it to have an honest conversation.

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