Before news of the attack had spread, however, the notion of blaming the aggressive behavior of the victim held certain logic, albeit twisted. Aaron, for one, was desperate for a cover story that would protect his drug associates as well as himself — and he was apparently desperate to stay in the closet as well. His solution was to concoct a claim not unlike Mike St. Clair’s and allege that Matthew had made an unwanted sexual advance, which set off his rage.
Nearly six years later, after I’d questioned Aaron about his gay panic alibi innumerable times, he stated, “At the time, that seemed like … the best way to prove that I didn’t mean to kill him.” Aaron said the decision to use that strategy in court was “a little mine … a little of the lawyers … [but] it was mostly me.”
Once he and Russell arrived at the Fireside, the thing that was still foremost in Aaron’s mind was robbing the six ounces of meth that Ken Haselhuhn’s dealer friend was supposed to have.
“We went to the Fireside to wait and there was still no ounces,” Aaron said.
Since Haselhuhn had not been able to reach his friend yet, Aaron was privately seething. All he could think about was getting his hands on the meth.
But this is where Aaron’s story falls apart again. I don’t doubt that he was gradually slipping into a full-throttle meth rage; but there are also many reasons to believe that the six ounces Haselhuhn had bragged about and the six ounces Matthew was slated to deliver to Laramie that night were one and the same. And Aaron surely knew that. His suggestion that he randomly shifted plans from robbing Haselhuhn and his “friend” — whom he’d been plotting to rob since Haselhuhn told him about the six ounces early in the day — to robbing Matthew is another fabrication.
Whomever Aaron intended to rob, he was undoubtedly aware that robbing six ounces of meth that had come from an organized crime network in Denver was a serious offense and that someone had better have his back, whether on the street, in prison, or both. He was shrewd enough to know that without protection he didn’t stand a chance.
From the estimates of several individuals who were at the Fireside that night, Aaron and Russell were in the bar for roughly an hour before they left with Matthew.
Mike St. Clair’s recollection was that Aaron and Russell sat at the bar from thirty minutes to an hour. Yet according to Russell, during the hour or so he and Aaron were in the Fireside “we were separated for about 20 minutes.” Aaron said the same thing: that he and Russell had separated for a while.
Assuming the latter statements are true — and I have found Russell’s version of events at the bar to be credible in light of all the available evidence, including Aaron’s belated admission that it was he who had approached Matthew first — their remaining time in the Fireside went like this:
Aaron and Russell got up from the bar and walked over to the dance floor. Aaron wanted to ask Shadow to play his favorite song — “Gettin’ It” by the rapper Too Short. As they made their way across the floor, Russell ran into an old friend, Nicole Cappellen, who was celebrating her birthday. Cappellen, whom I interviewed by phone at her home in Los Angeles in October 2004, said she and Russell had known each other “as kids and in high school.”
According to Cappellen, she danced a little with Aaron and Russell, though other witnesses — and Aaron himself — also recalled that Aaron had acted “a little crazy” on the dance floor.
“I talked to Nicole for a little while,” Russell later recounted in a letter, “then I went back and sat down alone at the bar, where we were originally sitting.”
In the meantime Aaron went to the DJ booth.
(It’s unclear whether Cappellen ever spoke to the police, as she left the following morning for a week’s vacation in Las Vegas. But both she and the DJ confirmed the above sequence of events.)
After Aaron requested the song, he made his way over to the table where Matthew was sitting with Mike St. Clair.
As Aaron leaned down to Matthew, St. Clair heard Aaron say, “Hey buddy.” Aaron claimed he also “bummed a cigarette” from Matthew.
Although St. Clair did not hear the rest of their conversation, he noticed that Matthew listened, nodded yes, put out his cigarette, and got up.
When police first questioned St. Clair, however, there was some confusion about whether it was Aaron or Russell who had approached Matthew at the table. The confusion involved a crucial piece of evidence that would be misconstrued throughout the homicide investigation and the court cases that followed.
Russell owned a silver Boss jacket that Aaron had borrowed from him, which, according to several witnesses, Aaron was wearing that night. St. Clair could only recall, “It was the guy with the silver jacket” that had come over to talk with Matthew.
But more important, St. Clair saw that same individual — Aaron — enter the Fireside bathroom with Matthew. St. Clair was certain that he’d seen only one of the men go into the bathroom with Matthew, not both. This fits with Aaron’s admission to me that only he spoke with Matthew in the bar. It also coincides with what Russell has always maintained — that he never talked with Matthew.
In addition, I found no other firsthand witnesses to corroborate the widely reported fallacy that Aaron and Russell had gone into the bathroom together to plan the robbery. That rumor began with the false story Aaron allegedly gave Kristen when he arrived home that night, shortly after he and Russell left Matthew at the fence.
What Aaron and Matthew discussed in the Fireside bathroom will never be known, though it most certainly clinched Aaron’s decision to proceed with robbing him. And despite Aaron’s persistent lie that he’d never met Matthew before that night, his familiar, laid-back manner when he approached Matthew at St. Clair’s table (“Hey buddy”) — and Matthew’s decision to join him in the bathroom — do not suggest a meeting of strangers.
But regardless, a preponderance of sources have established not only that Aaron and Matthew knew each other before their October 6 encounter at the Fireside but also that their relationship had taken a bad turn.
Witnesses at the Fireside agreed that the three men left the bar together on what appeared to be friendly terms, sometime around or shortly after midnight. Doug Ferguson thought it was close to 12:30 AM; Matt Galloway estimated that they left between 12:20 and 12:45. The only indication of any hostility was the remark Matthew had made earlier to Mike St. Clair about “the assholes at the bar.”
According to Russell (whose version was confirmed by Aaron), “I was finishing the last mug of beer and watching TV when Aaron came over to me with Matthew. They sat down for 20 to 30 seconds, at the most a minute, and [Aaron] said, ‘Let’s go.’ ”
Russell admitted that he went along knowing that robbery was what Aaron had in mind, but he said that he and Matthew never exchanged a single word. Russell also stated that he was completely unaware then of any personal relationship between Aaron and Matthew.
Aaron and Russell walked out of the bar first, followed by Matthew, who bumped into Shadow near the door.
“I was walking up by the door to catch some fresh air,” Shadow recalled. “I lit up a cigarette and [Matthew] was walking past … And I looked up and he said, hey Shadow, what are you doing? I was like … you getting ready to leave?
“He’s like, yeah, I’m getting a ride with those two guys right there. And I looked over and I saw them standing [next] to a truck … [Matthew] stopped and talked to me but he was, like looking over to see if the guys were actually waiting on him … looking to see if they were telling him to hurry … something like that.”
According to Shadow, he spoke with Matthew “give or take … thirty-five [to] forty-five seconds … He asked me for a cigarette … and I was like okay, here you go … I lit it for him … He took one drag … and after that he just walked off. And I told [him], well give me a call.”
When asked if he thought methamphetamine was involved in the violent episode that began minutes later, Shadow said he had no personal knowledge of that. But he added, “Meth is a big thing
around this town … You just got to know the right people and it’s not hard to find it … it’s right there under your nose … You could find that anywhere in Laramie. Anywhere, I mean, the cops even know where to find it. They know exactly who to go to and stuff like that. But every time they knock one person down, two, three more pops up.”
One enduring mystery of that night, which can never be adequately resolved or reconstructed, is the conversation that took place once Aaron, Russell, and Matthew left the Fireside in the black Ford pickup owned by Aaron’s father. Aaron said that he and Matthew engaged in small talk at first, and Russell has consistently maintained that he couldn’t hear exactly what was said between the two men. For that matter, Russell hadn’t been privy to the words they exchanged earlier near the pool table or in the bathroom, which apparently prompted Matthew to leave with them.
But both men have also told me unequivocally on numerous occasions that it was the other robbery Aaron was planning — the one involving Ken Haselhuhn, Haselhuhn’s friend, and six ounces of meth — that drove the night’s events.
While Aaron continues to say that he abruptly shifted plans from robbing Haselhuhn and his friend to robbing Matthew, his patchwork of stories doesn’t add up. Moreover, in light of new information and evidence I discovered about the meth-trafficking activities of both Aaron’s associates and Matthew’s during the time period leading up to the attack (and afterward), there are compelling reasons to conclude that Aaron’s two planned robberies were not only connected but one and the same.
For a long time I was confused about why Aaron would spin such a complicated web of lies. Why didn’t he simply confess that he and Matthew had been friends and that they’d bought and sold drugs from each other?
I could even comprehend why Aaron might lie about their hidden sexual relationship, given the likelihood that he’d spend the rest of his life in prison. Standing all of five foot six and weighing about 130 pounds, for him to admit otherwise would have been an open invitation to predators.
But it was a couple of Aaron’s former drug cohorts who helped me understand that Aaron had no choice but to protect the suppliers that he — and they — had worked for. One particular supplier had a lot to lose if his name surfaced during the Shepard case, as he was in Laramie awaiting sentencing on federal drug charges on the night Matthew was attacked. For Aaron to implicate him in the sequence of events involving Haselhuhn, Matthew, and an attempted robbery of six ounces of meth, which exploded in murder and became a national event, would have been disastrous for the supplier — and also for Aaron. His life in prison would have been perilous at best.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Sounds of Silence
In his opening statement at Aaron’s trial the following year, Cal Rerucha gave jurors a summary of what occurred after Matthew left the Fireside with Aaron and Russell:
The next part of this story, this journey, will be told by the defendants themselves. Mr. McKinney and Mr. Henderson. You will get to look at their statements. You will observe what was said …
After they got Matthew Shepard out of the bar, they took kind of a strange route, if you’re familiar with Laramie. Normally you go to Grand Avenue, because it’s a through street, but neither one had driver’s licenses that were valid, so they took kind of a different route … They go to Garfield … until it deadends into 15th Street. Then they go to Grand Avenue … and go east … and it takes them past the Wal-Mart store.
… Of course this is late at night; traffic is light, perhaps four or five minutes to get from the Fireside Lounge to the area of Wal-Mart.
And then begins the three-part ordeal of Matthew Shepard. Matthew Shepard sits between Mr. Henderson, who is driving the vehicle, and Mr. McKinney. At the approximate location of the Wal-Mart, Mr. McKinney says these words, “We are not gay, and you’re getting jacked.”
Now, Mr. McKinney can’t remember if the first blows that were struck were with fists or with a .357 Magnum with an eight-inch barrel, but [Matthew] was hit in the vehicle. And the reason for that was that he would produce his wallet … Mr. McKinney said he produced it with ease. Unfortunately the contents of that wallet yielded only $20 [sic].
They proceeded further and the beating continued, perhaps three, six more times in the vehicle, all at the hand of Mr. McKinney. They drove to an area that was familiar to Mr. McKinney and to Mr. Henderson …
Nowhere in his opening statement did Cal Rerucha mention methamphetamine or any of the convoluted events and circumstances that had been building, bit by bit, in the hours and days leading up to Matthew’s encounter with Aaron and Russell at the Fireside. Although Cal was not aware of all of those circumstances at the time, his reasoning as a prosecutor was simple: He expected Aaron’s defense team to rely heavily on meth as a contributing factor and, therefore, he did everything he could to keep mention of meth out of the record.
He turned out to be right. Aaron’s attorneys did include meth as a key element of their defense strategy, but their focus was almost exclusively on Aaron’s personal addiction. They stayed away from the complexities of his dealing activities — and they apparently knew nothing of Matthew’s. Instead they stuck with Aaron’s cover story: that he hadn’t known Matthew before that night.
According to the opening statement of Jason Tangeman, one of Aaron’s defense attorneys, “When they get ready to leave for the bars, Aaron and Russell haven’t talked about robbing anybody. They haven’t talked about beating anybody. And they haven’t talked about hatred of homosexuals or anything of that nature. In fact, Aaron and Russell … have never even heard the name Matthew Shepard” (italics mine).
With regard to the latter claim, both the defense and the prosecution sides of the case appeared to be in complete agreement, which served to advance further the media-driven perception that a pair of strangers had targeted Matthew because he was gay.
In a June 2004 interview, Russell gave an account of their drive to the fence, which essentially corresponded with Cal Rerucha’s summary.
“How long were [the three of you] in the truck together before Aaron pulled out the gun and began to hit Matthew?” Russell was asked.
“Just a matter of minutes,” he said. “As long at it takes to get there [to Imperial Heights]. Two or three minutes, five minutes at the most.”
“Where were you when the beating started?”
“… It happened right before we turned into the residential area,” Russell continued. “And that’s when [Aaron] pulled the gun out … he said that, ‘You’re getting robbed,’ basically … Then it was after we had went [sic] into the residential area that he hit him.”
“Why did he then begin to hit him if Matthew gave him his wallet?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know why he decided to hit him … I was surprised, shocked. Because I didn’t expect it to go the way that it did … I guess I didn’t know what to expect but I really didn’t want Matthew to get hurt out of the whole thing.”
The sequence of events that Cal outlined in Aaron’s trial — insofar as when and where the crime began and how Aaron, Russell, and Matthew ended up minutes later in an orgy of violence at a remote prairie fence — matches for the most part the versions recounted by Aaron and Russell, with a few crucial differences. But significantly, neither the prosecution nor the defense ever offered a complete or accurate explanation of the crime’s underlying motives. Both sides also failed to distinguish sufficiently between Aaron’s role and Russell’s, including the hidden personal factors that came into play.
In his 2004 interview with Elizabeth Vargas, Aaron provided the most complete — and the only videotaped — account of his brutal attack on Matthew since his rambling confession to police six years earlier. (To my knowledge, the only other recorded interviews with Aaron are those that I conducted and a brief interview with a Wyoming radio station.)
Elizabeth Vargas: You had told police that at some point Matthew reached over and grabbed your leg.
Aaron McKinney: Yeah.
Elizabeth Vargas: And that you thought he was coming on to you.
Aaron McKinney: Yeah.
Elizabeth Vargas: Is that true?
Aaron McKinney: Yeah.
Elizabeth Vargas: When did that happen?
Aaron McKinney: On the way out. On the way out of town.
Elizabeth Vargas: What did he say? What did you do?
Aaron McKinney: I don’t think he said anything. He just did it.
Elizabeth Vargas: And what did you do when he grabbed your leg?
Aaron McKinney: I hit him.
Elizabeth Vargas: You hit him?
Aaron McKinney: Yeah …
Elizabeth Vargas: So that’s what triggered the robbery attempt?
Aaron McKinney: No, I was already going to rob him. I guess that just gave me a jump, an off-cue [sic], to get it started …
Elizabeth Vargas: So you pulled out the gun and hit him.
Aaron McKinney: I had my arm behind the seat with it … [he demonstrates] like that. I was getting ready to do it, to pull it on him anyways.
Elizabeth Vargas: And what did he do when you hit him?
Aaron McKinney: Not a whole lot. He became pretty cooperative after that …
According to Aaron, he told Matthew, “ ‘Give me your wallet’ … something along those lines.” He said Matthew immediately handed over the wallet.
Elizabeth Vargas: How much money was in there?
Aaron McKinney: Thirty bucks.
Elizabeth Vargas: Thirty bucks?
Aaron McKinney: Yeah, that’s it …
Elizabeth Vargas: So if he gave you the wallet and money, did you stop beating him?
Aaron McKinney: No.
Elizabeth Vargas: Why not?
Aaron McKinney: I don’t know. I’m not sure. I was pushed past my point — my tolerance.
The Book of Matt Page 22
