The Book of Matt

by Stephen Jimenez

  “Russell was born premature with very severe health problems,” she said. “His mother was young and she was not ready to be a mother. He faced many trials, more than any child ever deserved to go through.”

  After expressing Russell’s “great sorrow and grief” to everyone in the courtroom, Lucy turned to Judge Donnell and with earnest conviction said that her family did not condone in any way what her grandson had done.

  “But for the Russell we love, we humbly plead with you to sentence him to two life terms concurrently,” she continued. “Please do not take Russell completely out of our lives forever. We believe that he can still make some goodness come out of his life.”

  Were Russell to receive concurrent life sentences he could conceivably become eligible for parole at some future time, while consecutive terms virtually ensured he would never be released.

  Before Lucy returned to her seat she addressed her grandson, assuring him of her love and vowing to support him “throughout the times that may come.”

  Russell spoke next. A profound silence fell over the courtroom as he stepped up to the lectern and looked dolefully at the Shepards.

  Dennis and Judy returned his gaze, while Logan shifted uneasily.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Shepard, there is not a moment that goes by that I don’t see what happened that night,” he told them. “I know what I did was very wrong, and I regret greatly what I did. You have my greatest sympathy for what happened. I hope that one day you will be able to find it in your hearts to forgive me.”

  Russell turned then to his grandmother; his half sisters, Carla and Stacey; and several aunts and uncles in the seats behind his defense attorneys.

  “To my family, thank you so much for being there with me,” he said. “And I hope you can also one day forgive me.”

  At that moment forgiveness was not foremost in Cal Rerucha’s mind. He knew the only outcome that could remotely console the Shepard family was justice.

  But surprisingly, a couple of Matthew’s college friends seated in the back of the courtroom were moved by Russell’s plea. When Matthew had confided in them about his 1995 rape in Morocco, he said he still worried that the perpetrators might have been punished too severely when they were caught. After living in Saudi Arabia, he was aware of how harsh and unforgiving Islamic law could be.

  According to Doc O’Connor, who said he had once asked Matthew what he did to people who hurt him, “Matt’s reply was, ‘I forgive them and go on with my life.’ ”

  Russell’s downcast eyes were facing Judge Donnell now. “Your Honor, I know what I did was wrong,” he stated softly. “I’m very sorry for what I did, and I’m ready to pay my debt for what I did. Thank you.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Henderson,” Donnell responded.

  A mild tremor in the judge’s voice may have stemmed from knowing that the lost young man awaiting his judgment had once been a shy and lost boy in this same courtroom, trapped in his mother’s downward spiral of alcoholism and abandonment. And like Cal Rerucha and Wyatt Skaggs, Donnell could not escape the dull ache of regret.

  After Russell returned to his place at the defense table, Donnell asked Cal if the Shepards wished to make a statement.

  “Yes, they would, Your Honor,” Cal said. He nodded reassuringly to Judy, who was already making her way to the lectern.

  Calmly, and with the immensity of her loss written in her sad face and posture, Judy spoke of what Matthew’s life and death had meant for her family. She spoke of her love for her firstborn son, who had known many disappointments and many successes; and how his experiences opened his eyes and heart to the differences in people.

  Listening to her brought tears to Cal’s eyes. He privately agreed with Dennis Shepard: Bastards who commit such heinous acts deserve to rot in hell. But in more reflective moments, usually in the solitude of a dark confessional at St. Laurence Church or during a sleepless night, Cal had felt many of his certainties fall away. And as he later confided to me, not a week had passed since Matthew’s murder when he hadn’t been to confession at least once. It was how he had held himself together when chaos and fatigue had become his daily routine.

  Judy’s weary gaze fell on Russell now, just a few feet in front of her.

  “I have been told I can address you directly,” she said in a low but determined voice. “I have debated whether or not to do so, and at times, I don’t think you’re worthy of an acknowledgment of your existence. But we all know you do exist. You murdered my son. You have forever changed my family …

  “My hopes for you are simple. I hope you never experience a day or night without feeling the terror, the humiliation, the helplessness, the hopelessness my son felt that night. And I want you to understand that the decisions you made and the actions you took have done this to you and to your family and to my family. None of us would be here today going through this agony if it weren’t for you.”

  After Judy thanked Judge Donnell, Dennis got up. With an aching sadness he talked about the singular mix of qualities that made Matthew who he was, including his “desire to work in human rights … saving the world through political means.” Dennis also alluded to his son’s “chance meeting at the Fireside bar with two friendly strangers.”

  What happens now? Who is there in this room to replace him to try and save the world?

  My son was born blind; not physically, but to people’s differences. He didn’t see big people and little people, black, brown or white skin, religious or ethnic backgrounds. All he saw were people that needed a friend. His best friends included Japanese, Palestinians and Saudi Arabs. His friends included Muslims, Christians and Buddhists. His friends included gays and so-called straights.

  Who will be their friend now? Who will worry about them?… Everybody needs a friend. Who will come forward now to be that friend?

  … The smile that I see when I close my eyes is gone now forever.

  Think of what has happened. Think of what Mr. Henderson has done; the impact of that mindless brutality to my family, to his family, to friends and to complete strangers. I no longer have a son with hopes and dreams, with problems and solutions.

  … Matt’s mother and brother watched him grow, and they grew with him while I traveled. They also watched him die. How do they continue? What does his brother say when he’s asked, “Do you have any brothers or sisters?” What does his mother do when his birthday comes? Or Christmas? Or Mother’s Day?

  Judy held Logan’s hand as tears streamed down her face. Seconds later, Dennis fixed his eyes on Russell, just as his wife had done.

  Mr. Henderson, what about your life and your family? What do your grandmother and aunt, your sisters, cousins, say now? What about you? What future is there?

  It takes someone quite unique to sit and watch someone else be beaten to death and do nothing about it. It takes a brave man to help another brave man tie up a person who did not know how to make and clench a fist until he was thirteen years old …

  Mr. Henderson … There is a hole in my life that I can never fill. When we eat dinner, there is a place set for Matt, and we know it will not ever be filled again with his laughter … and his stories.

  Remember this for the rest of your life.

  Russell lowered his head in shame. Later he would say he was still too numb to know true remorse as he listened to Matthew’s parents that day.

  Behind him he could hear his grandmother’s controlled sobs — the same muffled sounds he had heard on Father’s Day in 1993 when his grandfather had died, and again in January when she’d come to the jail to break the news that his mother’s body had been found.

  After Dennis took his seat next to Judy and Logan, Judge Donnell asked Wyatt Skaggs if there was anything he wished to say.

  Skaggs kept his remarks brief. To do otherwise would not only be insulting to the Shepards, he felt, but also put him on the wrong side of the judge. Skaggs already believed that Russell’s chances of receiving concurrent life sentences were slim. But with Jeff Donnell you never
knew for certain which way he was leaning. The judge had a statewide reputation for being fair-minded and independent, and ordinarily he liked to mull things over till the very end.

  “Your Honor, I do believe that Russell deserves some consideration for being able to stand before you, and before the Shepard family, and take responsibility for his actions,” Skaggs stated simply. “I will leave it to you to consider his sentence, Your Honor. Thank you.”

  Donnell nodded civilly, then looked to the prosecution table. “Mr. Rerucha?”

  Cal rose from the table slowly. He was all too aware of the magnitude of what was before him, yet still unsure of the words he would choose. He had decided to let his sentiments be guided by the proceedings as they unfolded that morning.

  Lucy Thompson’s plea for Russell had stirred his emotions with the same intensity as Judy’s and Dennis’s statements had, though the Shepards’ suffering and loss had been weighing on him for months already; he’d also gone over their victim impact statements more times than he could remember. But in Lucy’s eyes he sensed a bottomless grief that was only partly veiled by her stoically strong faith. Lucy had endured the slow destruction of her daughter’s life and was now watching and waiting as her grandson was about to be sucked hopelessly into a void of his own.

  At the lectern Cal thanked Donnell and gazed solemnly over the courtroom.

  “Each of us has the power to do many things,” he said to all assembled. “We have power to do good things in big ways and in little ways, and it is inherent in man that some people have the power to create hell on earth in big ways and little ways.”

  Cal paused, his eyes on Russell.

  “Mr. Henderson, you have created hell on earth for a family, for a community, for a state,” he continued. “This is not a time to look at mercy because mercy was done before we came into this courtroom. It is now time that we look at justice. This case has always been about the pain, suffering, and death of Matthew Shepard. For his family, that pain and suffering will continue. For this community, there is pain which we will be left with forever.”

  With one hand still gripping the lectern, Cal turned to Donnell.

  “Your Honor, I would ask for consecutive sentences,” he said. “It is appropriate. It is correct. It’s the right thing to do.”

  A moment after Cal returned to his chair at the prosecution table, Donnell asked Russell if there was any reason the court should not enter its sentence.

  “No, sir,” Russell answered faintly. His voice was so subdued that many in the courtroom noticed only that he shook his head slightly.

  Donnell had been extremely circumspect during the media-driven chaos of the past several months. Though discretion was his usual judicial demeanor, he had been extra cautious to avoid a mistrial or do anything that could come back to haunt him on appeal. State of Wyoming vs. Russell Henderson was without question the most challenging case of the judge’s career; he was also not naive about the lasting impact the Shepard case would have long after he retired from the bench. Some of Donnell’s colleagues in Wyoming legal circles said his only remaining ambition was a seat on the Wyoming Supreme Court, for which he was eminently qualified, and that he was unlikely to render any decision that might jeopardize his chances of being appointed.

  Nonetheless, Russell Henderson’s sentencing hearing on April 5, 1999, was the judge’s first real opportunity to publicly vent some of his carefully guarded thoughts on all that he had seen and heard since the October 1998 murder.

  “Many people have called this a hate crime,” Donnell told the packed courtroom. “Quite frankly, the Court does not find this matter to be so simplistic, for it is quite clear that a number of motives and emotions were involved here. The end result, whatever the motivation, was the brutal murder of a young man who was beaten to death with a three-pound revolver, perhaps in part because of his lifestyle, and perhaps because of a $20 [sic] robbery.”

  Almost every time that I went back over a transcript of the April 5 hearing, I stopped at those words: perhaps in part because of his lifestyle, and perhaps because of a $20 robbery. I assumed the judge was referring in his use of the word lifestyle to allegations that Matthew had made unsolicited sexual advances at the Fireside bar. There had been no mention of drugs during the hearing, which was in keeping with Wyatt Skaggs’s position that drugs played no part. There had also been no mention of the complicated personal history between Aaron and Matthew, of which Russell was apparently ignorant on the night of the attack.

  But after the series of discoveries I’d made during my investigation, I was astonished that Judge Donnell — along with both the prosecutor and defense attorneys — seemed to have had little or no knowledge at the time of the murder’s drug component. The notion that Matthew’s killing had “perhaps [come about] because of a $20 robbery” suggested a very different set of facts and circumstances than a rivalry involving interstate meth trafficking. It was the latter that had been behind Aaron’s ill-conceived plan to rob ten thousand dollars’ worth of methamphetamine from a family of competitors — Matthew’s Denver-based “family” to be exact.

  I understood by then that some police officials had made the decision long before to “let sleeping dogs lie,” but what about the sacred duty of the court, both legally and morally, to establish what was true and to administer justice equitably?

  Were the complexities of the case so much of a “hornet’s nest” — to use Aaron McKinney’s words — that leading participants decided it would be more prudent and practical not to poke deeper into the truth?

  As I contemplated these questions, I was reminded of one of the few admissions Aaron has made since October 1998 that suggests he isn’t totally devoid of empathy or remorse. In one of our recorded interviews, he stated,

  It’s really hard for me to … see [Russ] in this situation, knowing that I’m the one that put him here. I ruined that guy’s life.… He didn’t do nothing [sic]. The only thing that man’s guilty of is keeping his mouth shut.

  Judge Donnell arched forward in his chair, his tone strict and uncompromising.

  “Mr. Henderson, you drove the vehicle that took [Matthew Shepard] to his death,” he said. “You bound him to that fence. You stood by while he was struck again and again, his blood on your coat, doing nothing to stop it. You left him there for sixteen hours. This was a most savage crime, Mr. Henderson, evidencing a total lack of respect for human life, all life, whether different from your own or not.”

  Russell’s eyes never strayed from the judge, just as his attorneys had instructed him, but more of a vacancy had crept into his expression. Behind him, Lucy bowed her head despondently, resigned to what was coming.

  “The Court also considers, as it must, your own background,” Donnell went on. “The Court notes that you have no significant criminal history by way of prior felony convictions; and notes as well that you did not, for the most part, grow up with any sort of parental influence. This Court most certainly does not criticize your grandmother, but that’s not the same as having your parents available. It isn’t. It can’t be. But you are not a victim here because of your unfortunate background. You are a perpetrator. The pain you caused, Mr. Henderson, will never go away. Never. There may be days from time to time when people won’t think about this or remember this, but it will always be here. The Court finds it appropriate, therefore, that your sentences be served consecutively, as follows …”

  A wave of sighs and subdued whispers swept through the courtroom. Before Donnell could finish the sentencing order, a bevy of reporters leapt from their seats in the gallery and scurried into the corridor.

  Cal stood on the courthouse steps a short while later and addressed the media and a gathering crowd of spectators who had just heard the news.

  “It is my hope that Mr. Henderson will die in the Wyoming State Penitentiary and that the only time he leaves … is when they bury him,” he stated.

  Even on TV the moment registered with a biblical finality — an image that�
�s been impossible for me to shake from memory. It’s also a memory that I suspect Cal himself will never erase. It was he, after all, who had once argued zealously for Russell’s protection as a boy but had now demanded — and won — two consecutive life sentences, effectively guaranteeing that Russell, then twenty-one, would never walk free again.

  But if Cal harbored a secret of his own around the Shepard case, which didn’t emerge until three years later while he was campaigning unsuccessfully for a fifth consecutive term as county attorney, it was this: In 1999, Albany County, Wyoming — the state’s poorest jurisdiction — had only had enough money in its coffers for one trial of such magnitude, and even that required stretching the county budget to its limit. Although the Clinton administration had initially pledged its assistance, once the media and political spin began to die down, “the help never really materialized,” according to Cal.

  Cal had also raised the issue with the board of county commissioners, arguing fervently for the funds he needed to prosecute two capital cases fully, but he found himself overruled.

  “If there was only going to be one jury trial,” he later acknowledged, “there was never any doubt the person to be tried was Aaron McKinney.”

  That left Cal with little choice but to use the threat of the death penalty to strongly convince, if not coerce, Russell to accept a plea bargain. Court documents show that for six months Russell had steadfastly maintained that he was “not guilty” of Matthew’s murder and had insisted he be given a trial. But because of the strict gag order in place, Russell had also been prohibited from discussing specifics of the crime — and his defense — with his grandmother and other family members.

  According to Lucy Thompson, threats of the death penalty were constant as Russell’s trial grew closer. “Every time I talked to Wyatt Skaggs he hammered the same thing,” she recalled, “ ‘Russell’s going to get the death penalty if he goes to trial, Lucy.’ From the beginning Russell always said he wanted a trial, so he could tell his side, and he wouldn’t change that.