The Book of Matt

by Stephen Jimenez

  “But getting back to how this wildfire started,” Vargas pressed him, “… after, ‘this could be a hate crime’ by a reporter and saying, ‘well, yes, it could have been’ —”

  “Right,” O’Malley nodded.

  “The next thing you know, it’s all over —”

  “Right,” he agreed again.

  “— the media [reports], this is a hate crime.”

  “Oh, that was the media,” he said.

  In essence Dave O’Malley concurred with Cal Rerucha about the genesis of the hate crime theory — a theory that defined to a large extent what followed in the police investigation as well as the court case. But it had also taken almost six years since the murder for officials to talk about that aspect on the record.

  Near the end of the interview with O’Malley, Vargas touched on the iconic image of Matthew’s crucifixion, which remains painfully vivid, even today.

  “One of the things you wonder, because massive media coverage can be so distorted and so much can sort of fuzz around the edges in the re-telling,” she prefaced her question. “Is it true that Matthew was tied up like he was crucified?”

  “No, he was tied with his hands behind him and … kind of … sitting on his butt on the ground and then [he] had kind of fallen over.”

  “So where did that story come from?”

  “I have no idea,” O’Malley said hesitantly.

  Then he went on, “I’ve got an idea that it came from someone in local law enforcement who had never been to the [crime] scene, but I don’t know that. That’s always been a suspicion of mine.”

  In this regard, too, O’Malley was all but confirming what Cal Rerucha had told me: The inaccurate, yet highly explosive, crucifixion element of the story had been set in motion inadvertently by a law enforcement colleague during an early press conference with the media.

  At 20/20 we were relieved when Dave O’Malley ultimately backed down regarding the confidential story memo he had discovered with Elizabeth Vargas’s makeup case. Later, however, O’Malley contributed to tenth-and fifteenth-anniversary “epilogues” to the acclaimed docudrama The Laramie Project, in which he (and the show’s creators) ridiculed our investigation of the role methamphetamine had played in Matthew’s murder. More troubling to us as journalists, however, was learning that O’Malley had tried to convince Cal Rerucha to refuse an interview with us and to avoid discussing certain aspects of the case that had been buried when it ended. O’Malley’s argument was a familiar one: to let slumbering truths lie when so much good has been accomplished in Matthew’s name. When Cal refused, his twenty-year personal and professional friendship with Dave O’Malley ended.

  But this would not be the only consequence that resulted from Cal Rerucha’s willingness to tell the truth about Matthew’s murder. Other long-term ties were suddenly severed; there were missed career opportunities as well. Several times he was passed over for appointments as a prosecutor or judge — positions for which he was uniquely qualified — when just a few years before he’d been invited to the Clinton White House. He was also later honored with the American Bar Association’s prestigious Minister of Justice Award, yet in his home state of Wyoming he had trouble for a time finding a job.

  As Glenn Silber and I continued filming the 20/20 story, Ted Henson grew more distant. Worried I might lose him as a source, I foolishly phoned his mother’s home in Mississippi and left a message for him. My message was very discreet but it made him angry; he said I had violated his trust.

  “It is not that I don’t want to talk about Matt, it’s just [that] no matter what I can tell you about [him], someone is going to twist it …” Ted wrote in one of his sporadic emails. “Yes, there was something going on in [Matt’s] life that was bothering him. And I am not going to get into that at this point. It was something that he and I talked about … But I am not saying no either. I am thinking on what Matt would want me to do.”

  As our 20/20 broadcast date approached, it became clear that Ted would not agree to an on-camera interview. While I was disappointed by his decision, I could not shake the sense that he was still withholding important information. This feeling only intensified when I learned that he had been making frequent phone calls to Russell Henderson’s grandmother Lucy Thompson.

  According to Lucy, Ted introduced himself as “Matt’s lover” and confided that he was “certain” Aaron McKinney was “the real culprit” in the murder, though he offered little by way of explanation. He also asked her to call him Tristen, which he said was his “real name.”

  During their long phone conversations, Lucy said, he reminisced “affectionately” about Matthew and “shared his pain at losing him.”

  “Tristen also told me on many occasions, ‘Russell was in the wrong place at the wrong time,’ but he still felt Russell owed him an apology for Matthew’s death,” she recalled. Thompson said she had assured him that “Russell would welcome the chance to apologize.” But she added, “Tristen never really explained all of what he meant by ‘the wrong place at the wrong time.’ ”

  Later, when I asked Ted about his calls to Russell’s grandmother, he admitted that he had been talking to her as often as he could and said their talks gave him “a lot of comfort.” He also informed me that he planned to visit Russell sometime, which baffled me more. Why would a victim of Matthew’s murder want to visit one of the men convicted of killing him?

  These were a few of the topics Ted didn’t want to discuss further. He said he had “personal reasons” and preferred to leave it at that.

  SIXTEEN

  The Buck

  When I first heard rumors that Aaron McKinney and Matthew Shepard had been well acquainted months before Aaron exploded in rage — and that they had an intimate personal relationship — I was incredulous. I assumed it was just that: a local rumor mill churning out gossip. But then several sources who knew both men began to talk about their troubled history together.

  On a brisk autumn night in 2004, I made one of several visits to the Buckhorn Bar, a rowdy, Old West–style saloon in downtown Laramie. A block from the historic Union Pacific rail yard, the bar was surrounded at one time by a flourishing network of brothels.

  I had been tipped off by a source that I might find a woman named Elaine Baker there, someone I had been trying to track down for weeks. Baker had allegedly spent a long summer night in 1998 partying with Aaron, Matthew, Doc O’Connor, and a group of other locals. I had also been told that she had known Aaron since he was a teenager and might have other useful information.

  With the help of a discreet bartender, I finally found her sitting in a darkened window booth having a drink with her boyfriend. But I was wary of approaching her with others around. Time and again I had learned what a tight-knit, somewhat incestuous town Laramie can be. Once people start talking, word travels fast.

  All night long I hung out at the Buckhorn waiting for an opportunity and had all but given up when Baker slipped out of the booth to go to the ladies’ room. I quickly moved into a corner near the restroom door and waited for her to come out.

  An attractive woman with bleached-blond hair and sad, tired eyes, she was startled when I called out her first name. I asked if we could talk for a minute in the back room, which had another full-sized bar but was less crowded. In an instant she measured my intent and was apparently satisfied that I wasn’t on the prowl for a pickup.

  As we stood talking at the back bar, Baker’s relaxed but carefully chosen words gave me the impression of someone who had been waiting a long time to be asked the very questions I was now asking. With little hesitation she acknowledged that she had, indeed, spent an evening socializing with Aaron, Matthew, Doc, a girlfriend of Doc’s named Stephanie, and a few others. She said it was the first time she had met Matthew Shepard but “he was someone you wouldn’t forget.”

  “Matthew was just a nice kid, really sweet,” she told me. Before I could bring up his murder, she added, “I knew from the beginning the whole thing was a lie and a cov
er-up. Aaron didn’t hate him for being gay. They were friends, for god’s sake.”

  I was eager to continue talking but I knew Baker’s boyfriend was waiting in the front room. I asked if it would be okay to call her the next day. Her blue eyes studied me a second longer, then she hastily scribbled her number on a bar napkin. Already she had confirmed a story told to me by Doc’s girlfriend, Stephanie Herrington, about the evening the two women spent with Aaron, Matthew, and Doc. According to Herrington, it was not the first time she had met Matthew, nor was it the first time she had seen Aaron and Matthew together. On a different night, she said, she was drinking with Doc at the Buckhorn when both Aaron and Matthew were there as well.

  Like other fortuitous encounters I had while investigating Matthew’s murder — most of them with strangers — Elaine Baker gave me her confidence sooner than I could have hoped for. The next day we had the first of several long conversations at her dining room table. Elaine’s daughter, who had gone to Laramie High with Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, and had briefly dated Russell, joined us.

  Occasionally tears welled up in Elaine’s eyes as she described the hidden relationships among Aaron, Matthew, and Doc O’Connor. When she gestured with her thin hands I noticed she was trembling. “On the totem pole, Matthew was down here, Aaron was here, and Doc was up here,” she explained. “Matthew reminded me of the little frail mouse, just no protection, and Aaron the cat, but yet Aaron has Doc the pit bull over him.”

  Elaine also recalled in explicit detail the night of partying several weeks before the murder. The party began in Doc’s limo outside the Buckhorn, she said, and ended at his home in Bosler the following morning.

  In the back of the limo there was me, Stephanie, Doc, Aaron, Matthew Shepard …

  Doc and Aaron and Matthew were all sitting on the seat in the very back facing the windshield …

  Aaron was Doc’s little whore, his little plaything, that’s what he was. And that’s what the relationship entailed. Aaron worked for Doc … and Doc used Aaron whenever he wanted to …

  [Aaron and Matthew] were friends. They hung out together …

  Aaron … didn’t have any reason to be mad at Matthew for Matthew being gay because Aaron was bisexual …

  Elaine’s memories of that evening coincided almost exactly with Stephanie’s. Both women claimed they had witnessed an exchange of money in the limo, which they assumed was for drugs, and said there had been a sexual threesome among Doc, Aaron, and Matthew. According to Elaine and Stephanie, the activities continued at Doc’s home, with some variations. Doc invited Stephanie to join him in a bedroom with Aaron (which was later confirmed by both men). Stephanie said that Matthew waited alone in the next room, but eventually Doc and Aaron joined him.

  The salacious details of that evening’s events did not suddenly shed light on the motives behind Matthew’s murder, but they did strongly challenge the widely accepted scenario of a young gay man targeted for robbery and murder by two homophobic “strangers” because he made a pass at them. Interestingly, Russell Henderson was only briefly present in Doc’s limo — for a ride of a few blocks from the Buckhorn to the Ranger Motel — when he and his girlfriend Chasity decided to go home. The limo stopped briefly at the motel, where Aaron and Kristen were living at the time.

  Everyone I spoke with — Elaine, Stephanie, Doc, Aaron, Russell, Kristen, and Chasity — said that Aaron and Kristen had a squabble because he wanted to go out partying and she had to stay at the motel to care for their infant son. According to Kristen, Aaron was also looking for drugs that night and did not return until the next morning.

  SEVENTEEN

  Memphis

  Nine months after the 20/20 story aired, Ted Henson reappeared out of the blue. I was working on a new writing project when I received a call from Glenn, my producing partner at ABC News. He said he had gotten an “interesting” email from Ted, written to both of us. Dated August 8, 2005, the email stated that everything we reported in the 20/20 program was true, “but I am not going to be quoted on any of it.” (Later, Ted would consent to go on the record.)

  His email went on: “Matt did know Aaron. Aaron did sell Matt drugs. And sometimes Aaron expected more than money in return. When I found out I confronted Aaron with it. Aaron got very upset …”

  Ted also explained why he had been calling Russell Henderson’s grandmother for nearly a year. “Everyone that knew Matt would know that Matt would not want someone in jail who did not hurt him,” he wrote. “Aaron knows the truth [but] he is not going to admit to anything.”

  In light of the controversy we had generated with the 20/20 story, Glenn and I felt vindicated by these new admissions. Without knowing it, Ted was also confirming information we had gotten from other sources. Some of their revelations had not made it into the televised report, however. They had ended up on the proverbial editing room floor, not because they lacked credibility or couldn’t be substantiated, but because the powers-that-be at ABC News decided they were too editorially explosive. It was one thing to report that Aaron McKinney and Matthew Shepard appeared to know each other before Matthew’s brutal attack, and another story entirely to examine what their relationship entailed.

  Over the next few months I received a steady stream of emails from Ted. Some were disconcertingly graphic, others sentimental but excruciatingly honest. We also spoke on the phone a few times, though Ted, for reasons I didn’t understand, was still skittish about meeting in person. Determined not to lose him as a source again, I respected his wishes. Yet privately I held out hope that he would come around.

  Ted’s emails sometimes had a stream-of-consciousness quality, as if he were speculating about the circumstances behind Matthew’s murder rather than speaking from personal knowledge, which reinforced my skepticism. But in addition to answering my written questions, he included other anecdotes and details he had long kept hidden. He said the decision not to talk with the media after the 1998 attack had been his own, “out of respect for Judy and Dennis and [Matthew’s brother] Logan,” with whom he remained in close contact and occasionally celebrated family holidays.

  Yet Ted also volunteered that in the summer of 2004 he had been “pressured” by a New York attorney, Sean Patrick Maloney, not to talk with me or anyone else at 20/20, and not to provide photos or other documentation of his longtime relationship with Matthew.

  I had briefly met Maloney in August 2004 when he accompanied Judy Shepard to ABC News headquarters for an on-camera interview with Elizabeth Vargas. Maloney, who was then acting as counsel for the Matthew Shepard Foundation, had served as a senior assistant to President Bill Clinton in the White House. (In November 2012 Maloney was elected to the US Congress representing District 18 in the Hudson Valley region of New York State.)

  Before we rolled the cameras, Maloney, who was seated alongside Matthew’s mother, made an odd comment to Vargas and the rest of us on the production team.

  “My worst fear is that you’re going to tell us Matt was caught up in a drug ring with these guys,” he said delicately, his shoulders slightly hunched and hands clasped together in his lap.

  Maloney did not specify whom he was referring to by “these guys,” though we assumed he meant Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson.

  “We haven’t finished our investigation yet, so we haven’t come to any conclusions,” Vargas answered him.

  Maloney’s final words before we began filming the interview were to ask us to “please tread lightly.” “Matthew Shepard is to gay rights what Emmett Till was to the civil rights movement,” he told us.

  I could feel anger rising in my throat. I didn’t need to be lectured on history or gay rights by a man thirteen years my junior. Before he had reached puberty, I was demonstrating at the First National Gay March on Washington in 1979 and had actively helped pave the way for gay males like him who followed. I realized the most prudent course at the moment was to swallow my anger, but there was something else bothering me.

  Prior to his arrival
at the network, Maloney had made several phone calls to David Sloan, the executive producer of 20/20 who had hired me to report and produce the story with Glenn Silber. Sloan is also a well-known advocate for gay causes. During one of Maloney’s calls, which was played on speakerphone in Sloan’s office, other employees from senior management were present when — according to one — Maloney attempted to “smear” and discredit me professionally and personally.

  Maloney and others claimed that a Wyoming attorney named Tim Newcomb, who had filed an appeal on behalf of Russell Henderson that year, was responsible for taking the story to 20/20; they said Newcomb and I were colluding in an attempt to aid Russell’s appeal. In reality I had met Newcomb during a trip to Laramie in 2002 while researching the story for The New York Times Magazine — long before he became Russell’s appellate attorney and about two years before 20/20 took a serious interest in the story. More important, Newcomb had never contacted ABC News, nor was he a source for any aspect of our investigation, on the record or off. Although my colleagues at ABC News didn’t buy the allegations that my reporting was biased, it was obvious that Maloney and others had done their best to try to get the story “killed.” When that didn’t happen, other strategies were adopted.

  Tim Newcomb, I discovered upon meeting him, is a longtime friend of prosecutor Cal Rerucha and his wife, Jan. A handsome, sandy-haired native of Nebraska and an expert in constitutional law, it was also Newcomb who, behind closed doors in November 1999, helped Rerucha — in consultation with Matthew Shepard’s parents — to craft a last-minute sentencing agreement with Aaron McKinney’s defense lawyers. One of those lawyers, Jason Tangeman, happened to share office space with Newcomb and held him in the same high regard Rerucha did.