As soon as Lewis Macenze, Matthew’s lover and friend from North Carolina, received word of the almost-fatal beating, he immediately booked a flight to Denver and then drove to Fort Collins, desperate to see Matthew while he was still alive. Unbeknownst to many, he and Matthew had been in close contact recently, and according to Lewis had talked seriously of getting back together. Their plan was to live in Denver, where both of them could go to school, Lewis said.
But an official at Poudre Valley Hospital wouldn’t allow him to see Matthew, presumably due to a stricter visiting policy for non-family-members and despite Lewis’s explanation of his close relationship to Matthew. Lewis said he tried not to take it personally, yet suddenly he found himself adrift in a large crowd of strangers outside the hospital. The majority of those who had come to pay tribute to Matthew and demonstrate their anger and grief over the attack had learned about him on TV.
By the time Matthew died at 12:53 AM on Monday, October 12, the Laramie attack had already become the most widely publicized event in Wyoming’s 108-year history as a state. But despite the outpouring of public interest and media attention, Cal Rerucha sat quietly in his living room and wept for several minutes after DeBree called him with the news.
He thought about the repeated blows Matthew had endured; of his lonely suffering and his family’s anguish and the pain that Cal knew would always be with them. He was also overcome by the same incomprehension he’d experienced when fifteen-year-old Daphne Sulk had been found, her fragile body riddled with stab wounds.
But mostly he kept thinking about his sons Luke and Max, safely asleep in their beds down the hall. Cal was reminded that Matthew’s parents had also raised two boys. He prayed silently for all of them.
Later that morning Cal’s phone began to ring incessantly. At the courthouse and at home, the phones wouldn’t stop ringing.
Within less than a week the political stakes had been raised immensely in a case that continued to grip the nation. Memorial gatherings were organized in New York, Denver, Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Atlanta. In San Francisco one demonstration turned violent when protesters clashed with police. Dozens of other vigils and protests were being planned in cities and towns nationwide, while in Laramie, a thousand people held candles aloft and sang “We Shall Overcome” outside the University of Wyoming.
Hours after Matthew’s death, Cal changed the attempted murder charges he had filed against Aaron and Russell to three new counts: kidnapping, aggravated robbery, and murder in the first degree. Kristen and Chasity were also facing more serious charges now as accessories after the fact.
Sworn to before Judge Robert Castor on October 12 and filed on October 13, Count I of the new charges against Aaron and Russell stated:
After Mr. Shepard confided he was gay, the subjects deceived Mr. Shepard into leaving with them in their vehicle to a remote area near Sherman Hills Subdivision in Albany County, Wyoming. En-route to said location, the Defendant(s) struck Mr. Shepard in the head with a pistol, and upon arrival at said area, both subjects tied their victim to a buck fence and continued to beat and terrorize him while he was begging for his life.
Initially, as the Clinton administration conducted its own discreet inquiry into the case under the direction of Attorney General Janet Reno in Washington and the local supervision of the US attorney for Wyoming, Dave Freudenthal, it was unclear whether Cal would actually prosecute the case or a federal prosecutor in Cheyenne would take over those duties. But in the meantime Cal’s role as county attorney was instantly — and unofficially — redefined to include crisis management around the clock.
A couple of days after Matthew died, President Clinton made another statement about the presumed motives behind the crime.
“The public outrage in Laramie and all across America echoes what we heard at the White House Conference on Hate Crimes last year,” he told reporters before boarding a helicopter for a fund-raising trip. “There is something we can do about this. Congress needs to pass our tough hate crimes legislation. It can do so even before it adjourns, and it should do so … One thing must remain clear: Hate and prejudice are not American values.”
Judging from the turnout of five thousand people at a candlelight vigil on the steps of the US Capitol on Wednesday evening that week, many shared the president’s view that the Laramie attack was an unqualified hate crime. Gay activists, human rights advocates, and politicians expressed their outrage and sorrow over Matthew’s killing and demanded stronger protection against hate crimes. But no one expected the large number of senators and members of the House that showed up — from both sides of the aisle.
Senator Ted Kennedy spoke eloquently. “The crime against Matthew Shepard has shocked the conscience of the country, and a powerful response is clearly required,” he said. “… Hate crimes are on the rise, and we need to send the strongest possible signal as a nation that these crimes will not be tolerated in the United States of America.”
Actresses Ellen DeGeneres and Anne Heche were also among the speakers, as were Matthew’s friends Walt Boulden and Alex Trout.
“I can’t stop crying,” Ellen confessed to the crowd. “You know, I just — I think — I mean, I know we all feel the same way, and I’m here … he’s got his two close friends here — I don’t even know him, and I’m thinking this is just really selfish of me … And then it just hit me why I am so devastated by it. It’s because this is what I was trying to stop. This is exactly why I did what I did [came out publicly].”
The words of Anne Heche, Ellen’s girlfriend at the time, were more pointedly political. “Mr. Trent Lott, Mr. Newt Gingrich, Mr. Jerry Falwell, how many Christs must bear the crosses until we learn that we are all children of God?” she stated. “You have witnessed a demonstration of what your ignorant teachings about gays and lesbians breed. You preach in support [of] groups that encourage me to change who I am, to become more like you. I do not want to be like you.”
Just as quickly, however, forces on the Religious Right were mobilizing to defend their anti-gay positions, while insisting they had done nothing to create an atmosphere in America that encouraged hatred or condoned violence.
When Bill Clinton later compared Matthew’s murder to genocide in Bosnia, I admired him for telling what I thought was an unvarnished truth. At the time, I never gave it a second thought that Matthew’s accused assailants had already been found guilty of a hate crime in the court of public opinion — even before they were arraigned for the murder. The president also let it be known that he favored the death penalty for both men.
Furthermore, I had no reason to question the hate crime theory then, nor did I take notice of the timing of Clinton’s statements.
A few days before the October 6 attack on Matthew, the House Judiciary Committee had released thousands of pages of material from special prosecutor Kenneth Starr’s investigation, including damaging grand jury testimony and transcripts of the Monica Lewinsky–Linda Tripp tapes. Then, on October 8 — the day after Matthew was found at the fence — the House of Representatives authorized a wide-ranging impeachment inquiry on the president on a 258–176 vote. Thirty-one Democrats joined Republicans in supporting the move toward impeachment.
Surely it isn’t difficult to imagine Bill Clinton, a consummate political strategist, doing everything in his power to save his presidency, including shoring up key constituencies in his hour of crisis. Clinton also has a peerless gift for plucking our collective heartstrings at just the right moment. Symbolically if nothing else, the apparently random attack on Matthew revived, however briefly, a mythic American innocence that may have been preferable to the tawdry sex scandal threatening to bring down the president.
On the weekend before Matthew died, gay activist Cathy Renna, then the director of community relations for GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation), was quoted in the Laramie Boomerang:
[Matthew] seemed kind of defenseless. He presented a very safe image of gay people. That’s what affected people,�
� she said. “He could have been the boy next door. He looked like Leonardo DiCaprio, and the media jumped all over that.
But this safe image of “the boy next door” was also more politically expedient than coming to terms with the troubled young man that Matthew really was and the complexities surrounding the crime, including his well-hidden relationship with Aaron.
Years after Matthew was killed, Judy Shepard was asked by a reporter why there had been such a huge media frenzy following the attack on her son.
“There are probably a dozen reasons why the story got so big,” she said. “Maybe people were sick of Clinton and Monica.”
In truth, however, Bill Clinton may have had several reasons of his own for making the Shepard case a personal cause célèbre. According to Cal Rerucha, the Clinton administration and Attorney General Janet Reno were worried that the Laramie situation was volatile and “could turn into another catastrophe like the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing,” which claimed 168 lives. (During the 1993 siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, which also occurred during the Clinton administration, seventy-six lives were lost.)
Another factor that apparently worried government officials was Matthew’s HIV infection. At the time of the 1998 attack, it was potentially explosive news and they did their best to conceal it — especially since it wasn’t totally clear what had triggered Aaron’s violent outburst.
When it leaked out in a March 1999 Vanity Fair article that Matthew had AIDS, his parents stated that he had been unaware of it. But others who had been close to Matthew knew differently, yet they refrained from discussing it with the media.
According to Ronnie Gustafson, who briefly dated Matthew in Laramie, Alex Trout had introduced him to Matthew but had also cautioned him to “be careful” if they became sexually involved, as Matthew was HIV-positive. Doc O’Connor also later acknowledged, “Matt told me he had AIDS.” In his early interviews with the media, however, Doc had never broached the subject.
Whether or not Aaron learned prior to the attack that Matthew was HIV-positive will, in all likelihood, never be known. (Doc said he kept Matthew’s confidence about this until months after the murder.) But in retrospect, it’s easy to understand why the Clinton administration feared that more violence could erupt in Laramie. Since Aaron was instantly depicted in the media as a homophobic “redneck” — his friend Travis Brin, then thirty-four, told a reporter, “One time [Aaron] said we ought to get all these people with AIDS, stick them in an airplane and blow it up” — the idea that he could’ve exploded in rage after realizing he’d been exposed didn’t seem far-fetched.
It’s also not inconceivable that Aaron and Matthew might’ve had unprotected sex.
According to Russell, however, he “never heard any mention of AIDS” on the night of the crime. Nor did a single patron or employee of the Fireside Lounge notice any kind of animosity as the three men left the bar.
Nevertheless, in the fifteen years since Matthew’s murder, several reliable studies have found that users of crystal meth engage more frequently in unprotected sex than non-users do. Studies have also linked meth addiction in the gay community to higher rates of HIV transmission.
In February 2005, more than six years after the murder, journalist Andrew Sullivan posted the following on his website, under the heading “Meth Is the Issue”:
The real problem in the gay male epidemic right now is the use of crystal meth (it is hurting the health of people already HIV-positive just as much as it is contributing to the infections of people who are HIV-negative). This drug has rampaged and is coursing through straight rural America and parts of gay urban America. As many of you know, I’m a libertarian when it comes to recreational drug use (and what consenting adults do in private). But I draw the line at this drug. It’s evil, potent beyond belief, it’s destroying people’s minds, careers, lives and souls. If we don’t get a grip on it, it may undo all the progress we have made against HIV in the gay world … We should start insisting on zero tolerance of this drug among our friends and loved ones. We should do this … out of love and concern for one another. We should encourage every addict to get treatment … We have risen to the occasion before and we can do so again. Not by stigmatizing, blaming or ostracizing, but by confronting, persuading, begging one another to overcome this menace.
At 10 AM on Friday, October 16 — a cold, snowy morning — a funeral service for Matthew was held at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in the Shepards’ hometown of Casper, Wyoming.
Cal had been advised by federal officials not to attend the funeral, due to security concerns. As another precaution, armed SWAT teams were deployed on nearby rooftops to monitor a small band of angry demonstrators and to quell threats of violence. But perhaps most ominously, Matthew’s father wore a bulletproof vest when he came outside to address the media.
Inside the church, law enforcement agents had combed the pews searching for explosives before an overflow crowd of mourners was allowed inside.
In a park across the street from St. Mark’s, a notorious preacher from Kansas, the Reverend Fred Phelps, marched with members of his congregation, chanting venomous slogans like “No Tears for Queers” and “No Fags in Heaven.” Phelps, a defrocked Baptist whose website address was godhatesfags.com, had come to the funeral not only to protest but also to celebrate Matthew’s death.
“We want to inject a little sanity and gospel truth into what’s shaping up to be an orgy of homosexual propaganda,” he said.
In Phelps’s ideal world, civil law would be based on biblical code, and the government would execute homosexuals.
To many, Reverend Phelps — with his hateful ranting and oversized cowboy hat — came across as a pathetic caricature. Yet the previous weekend in Fort Collins, while Matthew was still alive on a respirator, a group of college students from Colorado State mocked Matthew’s suffering in a homecoming parade. For laughs, they decorated a float with a scarecrow and the words “Up My Ass,” then paraded it a few blocks from Poudre Valley Hospital where Matthew lay dying.
As if the trauma of Matthew’s murder and all that followed weren’t enough pain for the Shepard family, Dennis’s uncle suffered a fatal heart attack in the kitchen at St. Mark’s Church while waiting for the funeral service to begin. Then, within less than a month’s time, Dennis’s father — Matthew’s grandfather — would also die suddenly.
“The stress of losing Matt would also cost me my father,” Dennis later recalled.
About two weeks after the attack, Cal finally received a clear directive from US Attorney Freudenthal to proceed with prosecuting the case under Wyoming state law, which had no hate crime provisions. Freudenthal also relayed once more the Clinton administration’s promise to help with the case in any way they could. (Although President Barack Obama signed the Matthew Shepard Act into federal law in 2009, Wyoming legislators have yet to amend the state’s laws to include hate crimes.)
However, it could later be argued that the Clinton administration’s pledge of assistance was more symbolic than actually fulfilled. When news of Matthew’s beating first made headlines, federal officials signaled that they would play a central role in the case and would be there to offer whatever support was needed. But thirteen months later when the trials were over, Albany County, Wyoming, would be left to foot the bill. The county’s financial deficit would also result in the elimination of several deputies’ jobs in the sheriff’s office. It was an ironic outcome, given that a prominent feature of the hate crime bill pushed by the Clinton administration was more police enforcement.
At times, the federal government’s behind-the-scenes coaching of Cal bordered on the ridiculous.
“Always wear a blue shirt, otherwise you’ll look like a corpse,” he was advised, courtesy of Attorney General Janet Reno.
Another pearl of wisdom from the feds was, “Don’t let the media lights shine on your bald head.”
Lastly, he was instructed, “Don’t beat up on a public defender again.” Apparently, word
of Cal’s sometimes-steamy temper had made the rounds all the way to Washington.
Soon Cal began to receive death threats. Anonymous callers to his home in the middle of the night warned that they would take justice into their own hands if they had to. On one occasion a drive-by shooter fired a bullet through his living room window, but luckily no one was hurt.
The FBI quickly stepped in with special security measures to protect the Rerucha family. Cal’s wife, Jan, and their two sons, Luke and Max, were forced to curb their usual daily activities. The boys were no longer allowed to ride their school bus and were under constant surveillance. Cal had to restrict his movements to just a few places: the courthouse, the gym, church, and home.
His conduct as a prosecutor was also being watched carefully, not only in Wyoming but in Washington as well. Early in the case, he and Rob DeBree realized that unidentified federal agents were looking over their shoulder, keeping track of every move they made. Both the US attorney’s office in Wyoming and the FBI also kept abreast of the latest developments in the case.
Cal’s decision to seek the death penalty for Aaron and Russell didn’t come until he’d consulted at length with Matthew’s parents. It was his first death penalty case — and “not a decision I took lightly,” he said. Instead he would find himself wrestling with his conscience every step of the way.
For advice and guidance he turned to the same seasoned defense attorney who had once been Wyatt Skaggs’s boss — Leonard Munker. Munker cautioned him about the heavy emotional toll of a death penalty case and told him to read Norman Mailer’s epic book The Executioner’s Song, about the Gary Gilmore case in the 1970s. (Gilmore was executed by firing squad in Utah in 1977, after a ten-year moratorium on executions in the United States.)
To keep his personal motives in check, Cal also made frequent visits to his parish church of St. Laurence O’Toole for confession, often several times a week. He struggled to adhere to “my duty as a prosecutor but not to thoughts of revenge,” he later explained.
The Book of Matt Page 27
