The Book of Matt

by Stephen Jimenez

  ELEVEN

  The Blue Masque

  The somewhat idealized image I had of Matthew’s relationship with his father would later take on a more complex cast when I read letters Matthew had written to his college friend and lover Lewis Macenze while at home in Saudi Arabia over Christmas 1995. The media had barely mentioned Lewis in the aftermath of Matthew’s attack.

  A slim, handsome, and articulate African American man — the son of a minister — he first met Matthew in September 1995 at the start of Matthew’s freshman year at Catawba College in Salisbury, North Carolina. Macenze was a senior at Catawba and his father served as pastor of a local church.

  Reading Matthew’s letters, I realized the fracturing impact of his continual separations from his father:

  My dad had to leave early this morning … I told you he was always gone. I don’t know when he’ll be back.

  … I promised myself there would be no screaming this holiday between my father and I …

  He hasn’t lost his temper at me yet — no yelling, which in itself is a miracle … One thing I can’t stand is being yelled at … Anything that needs to be yelled can just as easily be said and I’ll understand it just as well.

  I first got acquainted with Lewis in emails and phone conversations, and later interviewed him in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he was working as a motel clerk. We also met up a second time in North Carolina so he could help me retrace Matthew’s steps there.

  Initially reticent, Lewis gradually helped me see facets of Matthew I hadn’t glimpsed before — aspects that were largely missing from the deluge of media coverage and much of what has been written since. He shared letters, photos, and other memorabilia, which he has kept devotedly stored in an antique wooden box since Matthew’s death. But it was Lewis’s painstaking journal writings and poems that provided the most telling chronicle of his relationship with Matthew, and the extent to which his grief is still an open wound.

  One journal entry was written shortly after their first encounter in September 1995:

  [Matt and I] met at the initiation of new members to the Blue Masque, Catawba’s theater arts group … My job was to blindfold the recruits and get them lined up before we stuffed them in cars and drove them out to the campsite. As I walked around, I came across this scrawny freshman who was complaining that he had to pee. Because he was cute, I volunteered to escort [him] to the nearest tree. In our brief time away from the group, we talked and I learned his name and that he spoke German, which I do, too; I quickly felt das sting auf cupid!

  According to Lewis, he and Matthew bonded quickly as friends and confidants. They “talked nonstop” about their vastly different backgrounds, yet thrilled at their mutual love of theater and the performing arts, and their common interest in politics. Over the next several months Lewis wrote of their courtship, as they slowly became lovers:

  On this campus of 800 students, there are only a few openly gay ones. My friends Kristine and Amy are desperately trying to fix me up. Amy convinced Matt to meet her at the computer center at the exact time I was to meet Kristine, who just happened to be at the next station. We all talked until the girls disappeared. I asked Matt to join me outside for a cigarette.

  He’s so classy in his designer jeans, smoking Dunhill’s. We sat at the old bell tower, chatting, smoking, laughing as if we’ve known each other for years. He told me of his family, his travels and studies, and I of mine. We sat under the bell tower for hours watching the night go by. (October 3, 1995)

  It’s my 21st birthday. I didn’t get to go out drinking or even make it to my party because I was in rehearsal until almost 1 am. I was surprised to see Matt sitting in front of the dorm with a single birthday balloon and a Mickey Mouse doll waiting for me. I was going to drop off my bags, then walk to get some cigarettes and was delighted that he wanted to come.

  When we returned to the dorm, there were those few seconds of uncomfortable silence: not wanting to end the night, not wanting to make the first move. I finally invited him up to my room for some boxed wine where the conversation continued. We sat on the floor: me Indian style, he wrapped around me. Our pact was to keep the night innocent and we did. Just talked and kissed, then slept … (October 26, 1995)

  Until I met Lewis, I had come across surprisingly few references to Matthew’s dating experiences, boyfriends, or a love life of any kind. As JoAnn Wypijewski shrewdly noted in her 1999 Harper’s article, there was an all-too-easy tendency “to caricature [Matthew] as a child-saint, because to think of him as a man evokes a sexual experience no one wants to know.”

  In April 1996, shortly before Matthew withdrew from Catawba to undergo psychiatric treatment in the city of Raleigh, he and Lewis attended a campus political event together. Matthew had already confided in Lewis about his sexual assault in Morocco as well as other issues that had been troubling him. But the bright tone of Lewis’s journal entry gave no indication that Matthew was depressed:

  What a fantastic Tuesday! Matt and I went to see [Republican senators] Jesse Helms and Bob Dole speak today at the gymnasium. The highlight … was watching Libby Dole and how she worked the crowd, and even though we were supposed to be outside protesting with the others we both enjoyed her to the point of wanting to become Young Republicans. Then Jesse reminded us why we weren’t.

  We held hands throughout the event, trying to bring attention to ourselves and left the building like that when some reporter came up to us and asked if we’d give an interview. It was weird talking to the guy, Matt and I like a real couple finishing each other’s thoughts. (April 9, 1996)

  TWELVE

  Indian Springs

  Other than Matthew Shepard himself, no one involved in the Laramie tragedy perplexed me more than Russell Henderson. At the start of my investigation, I accepted as fact that he and Aaron McKinney had participated more or less equally in beating Matthew, an impression first solidified in the onslaught of media coverage following the attack.

  Time magazine, citing unnamed police sources, reported: “McKinney … apparently taking turns with Henderson, began pounding Shepard on the head with a .357 Magnum revolver.” Other leading news organizations stated conclusively that both men beat Matthew. According to The Denver Post, “the assailants kept hitting him … until they believed he was dead.” Yet two weeks after Matthew died, U.S. News and World Report said it was Henderson who “allegedly” pistol-whipped him.

  Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson were repeatedly compressed by the media into a single personality with an identical set of motives. The New York Times was one of the few news organizations to hint at serious character differences. “If Russell Henderson was a quiet follower,” the Times stated ten days after the attack, “Aaron McKinney was a man with a short fuse.” But long after both men were convicted, confusion persisted over the real nature of Russell Henderson’s involvement.

  Even Cal Rerucha was uncertain about how involved Henderson had been in beating Matthew, or whether he had taken part at all. Rerucha was quick to point out that under Wyoming law Henderson was still legally responsible for the murder even if he never assaulted Matthew. Yet long after he had won the convictions of both men, I could see Rerucha was still troubled — morally if not legally — by what part Henderson had played in the chain of events that brought about Matthew’s death.

  Nothing I could find in Russell Henderson’s personal history seemed to fit with the sadistic violence of the murder. In contrast, Aaron McKinney had a reputation around Laramie for his volatile temper as well as a long juvenile record. As a boy, McKinney had allegedly abused animals for the fun of it.

  After Henderson’s arrest for the 1998 attack, his landlord, Sherry Aanenson, described him to a reporter as “quiet, polite, just your average male” and “the most American kid you can get.” “I have a hard time imagining him coming up with anything like this on his own,” she stated. “It seems extremely out of character …”

  Carson Aanenson, Sherry’s husband, couldn’t make sense of Henders
on’s involvement either. “The gay issue had never been an inkling of a concern,” he said.

  In several conversations with Cal Rerucha, I revisited the question of Henderson’s role in beating Matthew. Sitting behind his hefty oak desk in the county courthouse, Rerucha explained that his chief investigator in the case, Detective Rob DeBree, had all but convinced him that “Russell must have held Matthew down while McKinney beat him or he took part in the beating himself.” DeBree based his opinion, Rerucha said, on the substantial amount of Matthew’s blood found on a silver Boss jacket belonging to Russell.

  “If Russell wasn’t in close proximity to Matthew during the beating, blood couldn’t have spattered on his jacket that way,” Rerucha recalled thinking at the time. “We just assumed McKinney and Henderson were covering up the real amount of Henderson’s involvement.”

  I was intrigued by the doubt I saw in Rerucha’s pinched expression and the subtle change of tenor in his voice. As he glanced at me across his desk, he pointed with his index finger to an area just over his mouth. “The gash above Russell Henderson’s lip had a half-moon shape,” he said plainly, “just like bruises found on Matthew Shepard.”

  I had seen Henderson’s scar in courtroom photos and had simply accepted, like others, that it came from an unrelated street fight he and McKinney had gotten into with two young Hispanic men shortly after they left Matthew at the fence. I was also aware from court transcripts that at Henderson’s sentencing in April 1999, six months after the attack, he stated openly for the first time that he had tried to stop McKinney from beating Matthew. According to Henderson, McKinney turned on him in a fit of rage, striking him across the face with the same .357 Magnum he was using to beat Matthew. But until Rerucha mentioned Henderson’s scar I had never given it much thought.

  Although police reports showed that Russell Henderson received nine stitches in a Laramie emergency room that night, I was still leery of his motives. Was his new story just a ploy to win sympathy and a more lenient sentence? Henderson had been facing a possible death sentence for months. Why would his attorney wait until the hour of sentencing to reveal that he had been pistol-whipped by Aaron McKinney? Henderson himself initially told police he had been hit during the later street fight. Why should he be believed now?

  Yet Cal Rerucha, who had won his conviction, was now implying that he believed “Russell finally told the truth” when he admitted being assaulted by McKinney with the murder weapon. By the time of his admission, though, Henderson had already accepted a plea bargain for two life terms — a decision he made in the final stages of jury selection while under a threat of the death penalty.

  Upon hearing Rerucha’s doubts, my catalog of questions multiplied. What about Henderson’s bloodstained jacket? Was Detective DeBree right when he said Henderson “must have” been more involved in beating Matthew? Did he take turns with McKinney as widely believed?

  My first attempt to communicate with Russell Henderson was through his grandmother Lucy Thompson, a soft-spoken daycare provider who had raised him along with her late husband, Bill. Lucy was polite but discouraging when I phoned her in 2002, more than three years after the murder. She said she had been hounded incessantly by the media and had “no faith whatsoever in journalists.” Although I promised to respect her privacy and not quote her without permission, I could tell she had heard it all before.

  After calling Lucy intermittently over weeks, she finally allowed me into her tidy, single-story ranch home on Laramie’s South 26th Street to talk for what she assured me would be no more than ten minutes. “If I feel uncomfortable I’m going to ask you to leave,” she warned me at the front door. It was early evening and her circle of young children had already gone home for the day.

  Around Laramie I had heard several people declare, “Lucy’s raised half the kids in this town.” Cal Rerucha praised her as “a beloved fixture of the community for decades” and said she could provide genuine insight into Russell’s life. It was a life Rerucha himself knew intimately since he had advocated on Russell’s behalf in family court when he was a boy. Rerucha described how Lucy and Bill Thompson had rescued their grandson from the neglect of an alcoholic mother and a string of violent men who had passed through her life — men who had also abused Russell.

  We sat in Lucy’s cozily furnished living room talking for almost two hours, surrounded by framed photos of her four daughters, several grandchildren, and others in her family. Before the conversation was over I had no trouble comprehending her distrust of the media. The intrusions of reporters and camera crews during thirteen months of court proceedings in late 1998 and 1999 had been so unremitting, she said, that she nearly suffered a breakdown.

  Lucy eventually confided that she had been prepared to call the sheriff’s office and have me removed from her home if I behaved as others had. With a slightly mischievous glint in her eyes, she held up the portable phone resting on the arm of her chair. But as Lucy grew to trust my intentions, other conversations followed. Early on she arranged for me to meet Gene Pratt, the president of her Latter Day Saints congregation, and Deanna Johnson, a close family friend. Both had been close to Russell since he was a boy and agreed to advise Lucy regarding their impressions of me.

  Pratt and Johnson asked pointed questions about what I hoped to accomplish and whether it would cause the family more pain. Lucy informed me afterward that they had reported back to her favorably, but still she was not optimistic that her grandson would talk with me.

  “It’s Russell’s decision and I know he’ll make the right one, but he needs time to think about it,” she told me. “It’s up to him.”

  Several other individuals who were close to Russell during his adolescence — relatives, friends, employers, co-workers, and a former girlfriend — had stated in court documents that his world fell apart at age fifteen when his grandfather died. An employee at the Laramie post office, Bill Thompson was said to be the only male Russell bonded closely with or trusted. The two hunted and fished together, and during his early teen years Russell helped administer daily dialysis treatments to him. According to Lucy, “Russell adored his grandfather and Bill had the same feelings for him. When Bill passed away, so did a big part of Russell. It was painful to see how much he hurt.

  “I’m not making excuses for Russell, he must pay for what he did,” Lucy added in a sad but resolute voice. “Matthew Shepard’s life was taken so terribly and his family will always suffer missing him. I pray for the Shepards every day because I know the hurt they feel. But there’s a lot more to Russell than what many people think. He’s not the cruel person he’s been made out to be.”

  Even Cal Rerucha told me more than once, “We almost had a success with Russell, he almost made it.”

  Rerucha’s use of we implied personal regret, if not responsibility, for the system having failed Russell in his passage to manhood. His observation registered with more poignancy when Lucy showed me a picture of Russell at age fifteen on the front page of Laramie’s Boomerang newspaper, taken shortly before his grandfather died. Standing at attention in a pressed khaki uniform covered with merit badges, he is beaming with pride as Wyoming’s governor presents him with an Eagle Scout citation.

  Yet the belief of many that Russell Henderson’s world only came apart with the death of his grandfather was not entirely convincing to me. Was that, too, another myth of the Laramie tragedy?

  After waiting months for a reply to several letters I had written him, I received a short typed note:

  Mr Jimenez

  I have taken a long time to send this because I have been debating on whether or not I want to see you or not [sic]. I have changed my mind a hundred times. I finally decided that it should not hurt to talk to you. Please understand that for right now I want everything that I say to be “off the record”…

  Respectfully,

  [signed] Russell A. Henderson

  #19624

  Rawlins, Wyoming

  Had it not been for Lucy, my letters to Russel
l most certainly would have gone ignored. But it took three of his devoted guardians to persuade him to communicate with me, even off the record.

  By the time of our first face-to-face interview in the spring of 2003, Russell had been transferred from the Wyoming State Penitentiary to an austere prison in the Nevada desert. He was then in the fifth year of his double life sentence.

  One purpose of the interview was to find out how involved Russell really was in the violence inflicted on Matthew Shepard. Matthew had been beaten so severely with the barrel of McKinney’s gun that his skull had been crushed. It was a topic Russell had been wary of discussing in letters or phone conversations when he knew they were being monitored by prison authorities. But because of my persistent doubts, I had questioned him relentlessly anyway. His story was always the same:

  I have told you everything I know. I would even take a polygraph test to prove it to you. Maybe since I’ve been plastered all over the T.V. as one of the killers … people … want me to be more involved than I really was … Believe me, this life that I now have to live would be a lot easier if that were true … I hope that someday you will believe me but I understand why you don’t …

  High Desert State Prison, tucked on the outskirts of Indian Springs, Nevada, was a one-hour drive through barren, clay-colored hills from the extravagantly outsized Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas where I was staying for two nights. The New York Times Magazine had given me a modest travel budget but at the last minute I’d gotten a low-priced package deal online. Leaving behind the flashy commerce of the Strip, I soon found myself surrounded in every direction by clear cobalt skies, which made the horizon itself seem like a mirage.

  I arrived at the prison wearing jeans and a pale denim shirt, my head buzzed close to the scalp, and was promptly advised that I was being turned away because my attire was virtually identical to the inmates’ uniform. An affable female guard with some rank smiled at my dilemma. “Your haircut doesn’t help,” she ribbed me. But she was also quick to give directions to a Super Walmart back down the highway, close to the edge of Las Vegas. “If you hightail it, you can buy yourself a new suit of clothes and be back here in just over an hour,” she promised.