“It’s the biggest regret of my life,” he said. “It’s something I think about every day and wish I could change.”
Ted continued to stare at Russell. Gradually his face began to soften and the blush returned to his cheeks.
I was at a loss about how to interpret this moment — and even how to “report” it.
But later that afternoon when the presiding officer announced over the loudspeaker that visiting hours were over, I said my good-byes to Russell and then watched as Ted leaned over the low barricade that ran down the middle of the table, separating visitors from inmates. As the two men shook hands, Ted extended his other arm around Russell and hugged him warmly. I saw Russell reciprocate but then I looked away, aware again that this shared gesture belonged to them alone.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Missing Pieces
During the years that I’ve been preoccupied with Matthew’s murder, I’ve come to believe that the complex truths of his tragedy — and the parallel tragedies of Aaron and Russell — have a universal meaning that defies and transcends the politically correct mythology that’s been created as a substitute. There’s no doubt that the violence inflicted on Matthew triggered a national awakening about the harsh realities of anti-gay hate, just as there is no doubt that other positive developments followed on the heels of his murder, including a long-overdue expansion of civil rights — a mission that remains incomplete as of this writing. But the more I learned about Matthew’s life and his suffering, the more convinced I became that clinging to a partly false mythology could never yield the subtler, more powerful meanings of his sacrifice. It would also be a disservice to Matthew’s memory to freeze him in time as a symbol, having stripped away his complexities and frailties as a human being.
An obvious paradox is that I didn’t know Matthew personally. Nonetheless, I grew suspicious of the truncated portraits of him that I found in media accounts and official records. It seemed as if everyone who knew Matthew (and many who did not, me included) had their own take on his vulnerabilities and misadventures and how they all came to be. Over time, a handful of Matthew’s friends — together with the insightful public testimonies of his parents — persuaded me of the value that could be gained from peering into those corners of his life that have been invisible or mostly cast in shadow, and attempting to understand the part they may have played in the tragedy of October 6, 1998.
Early on, I’d read a variety of remembrances by people who had known Matthew intimately, which only amplified my interest in him. Though these statements sometimes obscured as much as they revealed, they invited further exploration of Matthew as a human being.
One particular quote that I’d come across in a 1999 Vanity Fair article stayed with me over the years — made by Romaine Patterson, a lesbian friend of Matthew.
“Matt had emotional scars — he had faced this kind of attack throughout his life,” she said. “He was a perpetual victim. That’s how he became the person that he was.”
Not only was I curious about her mention of “emotional scars … throughout his life,” but I also noticed that it differed somewhat from an observation Matthew’s father had made. “Violence was not part of [Matt’s] life until his senior year in high school,” Dennis Shepard stated. He spoke explicitly of “the mental anguish that Matt dealt with on a daily basis after his rape in Morocco.”
Yet Matthew’s mother had commented at various times that “he never had a best friend”; “he had a real restless, searching quality”; and “I think he always felt out of place.” Five years after the murder, though, Judy noted that her son had lived his life true to himself. “[Matt] didn’t live a lie,” she told a reporter for the Casper Star-Tribune. “He was happy in his skin. I don’t know how many people can say that.”
Still, I continued to reflect on Romaine’s belief that Matthew “became the person that he was” because he’d been “a perpetual victim.” Like Tina Labrie, Ted Henson, Lewis Macenze, and other confidants of Matthew, Romaine seemed to be suggesting that her friend’s emotional scars had older roots than Morocco.
My reason for probing into this sensitive territory is that I hoped to understand what may have been behind Matthew’s addiction to drugs and alcohol; what drew him into the Denver circle; and, ultimately, why he may have befriended Aaron.
Lodged in the back of my mind was the timeworn metaphor Cal had used in court during the Daphne Sulk case. “Some people have said that Daphne was not afraid of [her killer],” he’d told the jury. “Well, a fly is never afraid of the spider’s web until it’s too late.”
According to informed sources who requested anonymity on the subject of Matthew’s childhood and adolescence — presumably because some records remain sealed and others have been expunged — Matthew was a victim of sexual abuse and molestation as a boy and as a teenager. Just days before he was killed, while in the throes of fear and depression, he identified three of the perpetrators. According to my sources, all were adult males: an alleged member of his Casper church, an older friend whom he’d turned to for guidance, and a relative (not a member of his immediate family).
These same sources believe it was these earlier traumatic experiences — and not Morocco — that precipitated Matthew’s history of psychiatric ailments and self-medicating with alcohol and drugs. Apparently, his wounds from being sexually victimized also manifested in another common, but tragic pattern: The victim becomes a perpetrator himself.
At age fifteen Matthew was arrested for molesting two eight-year-old boys in his Casper neighborhood. According to a relative of one of the boys, Matthew received counseling to help him deal with the incident; he’d also attempted suicide and been hospitalized, she said. But a former Casper police officer who was assigned to the case expressed discomfort at how the later attack in Laramie had been mishandled by the media, as well as the fact that Matthew’s juvenile arrest record had been quietly concealed. (Court files show that on February 25, 1999, Cal filed a motion requesting that “the defense be barred from reference to or testimony regarding any information … which may be contained in police reports regarding Matthew Shepard, obtained from the Casper Police Department as well as juvenile records of Matthew Shepard obtained from any Natrona County [Wyoming] court records.”)
As a result of these and other discoveries, my view of Matthew as a perpetual victim took on new meaning, but not for the reasons suggested by the popular mythology. I also came to see some of the personal insights of his family and friends in a new light.
“Whenever [Matt] learned of someone suffering, it affected him personally,” his friend Tina had said. As a witness to his deepening crisis in his final days, she also recalled that he’d been “in a lot of emotional pain … wishing he had more security … feeling very alone, lonely, isolated.”
It was no longer such a mystery to me why Matthew had fallen in with an improvised “family” of dealers — or why he’d become a dealer himself. Since his teen years, Matthew had used a variety of drugs to cope with his isolation, not to mention the pain of being victimized sexually. But as a part of the Denver circle he gained a sense of belonging and even empowerment, however illusory or short-lived. His dealer friends whom I interviewed talked about how much they respected and looked up to him; and I imagine he, in turn, mistakenly looked to them to provide the security he longed for.
With this new understanding, I reconsidered some of the insights offered by Matthew’s father — and others.
“[Matt] was naive to the extent that, regardless of the wrongs people did to him, he still had faith they would change and become ‘nice,’ ” Dennis Shepard had said. “They would hurt him and he would give them another chance.” He also spoke of his son as “the perfect negotiator” who “would walk into a fight and try to break it up. He could get two people talking to each other again as no one else could.”
Tragically, these same attributes could be dangerous if you were negotiating in a criminal underworld — or with Aaron McKinney while he was st
rung out on meth.
EPILOGUE
In April 2013 I returned to Wyoming for my last visit in connection with the writing of this book. Over the years the trip had become a welcome — and by then necessary — ritual: pick up a rental car at the Denver airport, drive north on I-25 to Fort Collins, and then head northwest on Highway 287 to Laramie.
No trip to Laramie would be complete if I didn’t check in with Cal Rerucha and his family, and with Russell’s grandmother Lucy Thompson. I’d made several good friends and met many acquaintances there, but it was the Rerucha family and Lucy who invariably made me feel welcome in their homes and their lives. Despite the sensitive nature of my research and reporting — and my continual delving into their lives — I was never made to feel like an outsider once they grew to trust me. On the contrary, their steady friendship encouraged me to pursue the truth wherever it might lead, at whatever cost.
Whenever time allowed, I’d also spend a day visiting Russell — initially at the prison in Torrington, Wyoming; and more recently at the state penitentiary in Rawlins, where he’s expected to remain for the foreseeable future, if not the rest of his life. Aaron broke contact with me in 2005 for reporting on “that sex stuff” and for mentioning on TV that he has a son.
As I drove through Fort Collins that afternoon, I could see the skies beginning to change dramatically. Earlier in the day Denver had appeared to be in the throes of spring, but in parts of northern Colorado and Wyoming a late-winter snowstorm had already hit. It was the third week in April, which meant little if you were trying to predict what kind of weather you’d encounter in the Rockies.
Perhaps I’d made a mistake not renting a four-wheel-drive SUV. If I got stuck on the sixty-five-mile stretch of highway between Fort Collins and Laramie — an expanse of rugged, hilly plains — it would be awhile before help came. I also wondered if the Wyoming interstate would be open the following day, so I could make the drive to visit Russell at the penitentiary. The car radio was saying that portions of I-80 had been closed due to heavy winds and snowfall.
I’d spent time in Wyoming during every season and had learned from the locals to pay close attention to the weather — especially the fierce winds.
Oddly, though, as I left Fort Collins and drove north on 287, I had only a dim sense that a thirteen-year journey would soon end. I was finishing a story, yes, but the story and its characters had become etched into my life, as had Wyoming and its “hometown.”
I’d watched from a distance as Cal’s two sons had grown up: from enthusiastic teenagers to hardworking college students, and, now, mature young men with careers. I’d sat in Lucy’s living room when it was overflowing with kids and she was still running her beloved daycare program, but also in more recent days when her leg has been crippled by disease and a pensive quiet hangs over her home. And I remembered Russell as a young “lifer” in his early twenties when we’d first begun to talk, and reminded myself he was now approaching the age of thirty-six.
They were no longer characters in a story. They’d become friends whose lives had enriched me. It was true that the story I’d written would end shortly, but on that cloudy afternoon with the plains blanketed in snow in every direction, I knew with certainty that I’d return to Wyoming — not only to see friends and feed my nostalgia, but also to visit Russell. As a gay man with no sons or daughters of my own — and an intimate understanding of the tragedy that took Matthew’s life and sent Russell away for the remainder of his — the least I can do is offer my friendship and do some small part to see that he, like Matthew, is not forgotten.
In that stark but bracing landscape — and again the following day as I drove to the prison in Rawlins — I conjured up some familiar ghosts. I thought of Matthew and his love of Nelson Mandela, and the dream that he’d one day work in human rights. I missed this young man whom I’d never known, whose father once called him Dandelion Head and the Bad Karma Kid.
I remembered just a few of the lost and the fallen, and the dead whose voices still speak.
The pregnant girl, Daphne Sulk.
Steve Heyman, the professor whose murderer has never been found.
Denise McKinney, a mother who departed too young.
Cindy Dixon, frozen in the falling snow.
High on a ridge I saw a long row of tall, white windmills, spinning slowly.
I knew this highway, I’d driven it many times before. Soon I’d be sitting with Russell in a windowless, fluorescent-lit room with vending machines, trying to put some of the ghosts behind us.
And then I’d be back on the road again, traveling home.
LIST OF SOURCES
Subjects interviewed for The Book of Matt and the ABC News 20/20 story produced by author Stephen Jimenez:
Cal Rerucha — Former County Attorney, Albany County, Wyoming. Currently the Carbon County Attorney.
Aaron McKinney
Bill McKinney — Father of Aaron McKinney.
Adrian “Bear” McKinney — Cousin of Aaron McKinney
Kristen Price — Former girlfriend of Aaron McKinney.
Kim Bierema — Mother of Kristen Price.
Russell Henderson
Lucy Thompson — Grandmother of Russell Henderson.
Linda Flynn — Aunt of Russell Henderson
Pat Flynn — Uncle of Russell Henderson.
Lisa Johnson — Aunt of Russell Henderson.
Carla Henderson — Half Sister of Russell Henderson.
Stacey Teel — Half Sister of Russell Henderson.
Wyatt Skaggs — Former Albany County Public Defender and Lead Counsel for Russell Henderson.
Paul Sonenberg — Legal Assistant, Henderson Defense Team.
Priscilla Moree — Investigator, Henderson Defense Team.
Tim Newcomb — Appellate Counsel for Russell Henderson.
Chasity Pasley — Former girfriend of Russell Henderson.
Linda Larson — Mother of Chasity Pasley.
Rod Pasley — Father of Chasity Pasley.
Doug Larson — Uncle of Chasity Pasley.
Lois Pasley — Grandmother of Chasity Pasley.
Ben Fritzen — Former Detective, Laramie Police Department. Currently Lieutenant and Head. Administrator, Albany County Detention Center.
Dave O’Malley — Former Laramie Police Commander. Currently the Albany County Sheriff.
Rob DeBree — Former Sergeant Detective, Albany County Sheriff’s Office. Currently the Albany County Undersheriff.
Flint Waters — Former Agent, Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation and Former Deputy, Albany County Sheriff’s Office.
Lynne Callaghan — Former Agent, Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation.
Jason Tangeman — Attorney for Aaron McKinney.
Dion Custis — Attorney for Aaron McKinney.
Maribeth Galvan — Attorney for Chasity Pasley and Kevin Robinson.
Kevin Robinson — Convicted of manslaughter in the 1997 murder of Daphne Sulk.
Jean Shaw — Mother of Kevin Robinson.
Stacy Simpson — Sister of Kevin Robinson.
Buddy Carroll — Attorney for Kevin Robinson
Judge Jeffrey Donnell — Presiding district court judge in the cases of Russell Henderson, Kevin Robinson, Dennis Menefee, Mark K. Rohrbacher, etcetera. Richard Bohling — Current Albany County Attorney.
Ken Brown — Former Deputy County Attorney, Albany County, Wyoming. Current Deputy County Attorney, Goshen County.
Ken Haselhuhn — Former roofing co-worker of Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson.
Judy Shepard — Mother of Matthew Shepard.
Sean Maloney — Former Attorney for the Matthew Shepard Foundation and Current Member of the US House of Representatives, representing District 18 of New York State.
Ted Henson — Friend and Lover of Matthew Shepard.
Tyler Kern — Friend of Matthew Shepard.
Alex Trout — Friend of Matthew Shepard.
Walt Boulden — Friend of Matthew Shepard.
&
nbsp; Ronnie Gustafson — Friend of Matthew Shepard.
Tina Labrie — Friend of Matthew Shepard.
Phil Labrie — Friend of Matthew Shepard.
Chris Cesko — Friend of Matthew Shepard.
Ryan Bopp — Friend of Aaron McKinney and Kristen Price.
Katie Bopp — Friend of Aaron McKinney and Kristen Price.
Cory Warpness — Friend of Aaron McKinney.
David Farris — Friend of Aaron McKinney.
Melinda Farris — Mother of David Farris and friend of Aaron McKinney. Now deceased.
Dale Harper — Drug dealer who was convicted of a 1996 drug-related murder in Albany County, Wyoming. Former cellmate of Aaron McKinney. Now deceased.
Freya Harper — Widow of Dale Harper.
Daisy Harper — Daughter of Dale Harper.
Faye Harper — Daughter of Dale Harper.
Trudy McCraken — Former Mayor of Laramie.
Deana Johnson — Friend of Lucy Thompson and Russell Henderson.
Gene Pratt — President of Latter Day Saints congregation in Laramie and friend of Lucy Thompson and Russell Henderson.
Shaundra Arucby — Former girlfriend of Russell Henderson.
Matt Mickelson — Former owner, the Fireside Lounge.
Doug Ferguson—Former bouncer, the Fireside Lounge.
JoAnn Wypijewski — Journalist.
Bill Dobbs — New York-based gay rights activist who opposed the death penalty for Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson.
Andrew Sullivan — Journalist and Gay Advocate.
Jason Marsden — Former journalist and currently the executive director of the Matthew Shepard Foundation,
Charles Levendowski — Journalist for the Casper Star-Tribune, Casper, Wyoming. Now deceased.
Mary Vrooman — Owner of the former Overland Restaurant, Laramie, Wyoming.
Jason Palumbo — Former bar owner, Laramie, Wyoming.
Stephanie Herrington — Former girlfriend of Doc O’Connor.
Mark Herrington — Ex-husband of Stephanie Herrington.
The Book of Matt Page 36