The Book of Matt

by Stephen Jimenez

  By the end of the trial ten days later, he would sum up his case: “The only piece of the puzzle that is missing is Matthew Shepard. Even though he cannot testify, he fills every corner of the room … and I ask you to do justice.” In actual fact, the trial itself offered few surprises yet it left many pieces of the puzzle missing — notably the story of how Matthew had become trapped in an underworld where Aaron was first his friend and occasional sex partner, then his competitor and adversary, and finally his killer.

  Much as the media had done, Cal painted a picture of stark contrasts between Matthew’s world and the world inhabited by Aaron and Russell. “Mr. Shepard paid in bills [at the Fireside bar],” he said, “he was immaculately dressed, he was polite, his shoes were shined, he had the air of someone who was educated and someone who was wealthy.” Aaron and Russell, on the other hand, “spilled dimes and quarters to pay for a pitcher of beer, and they asked for the cheapest. Their manner is rough. They’re not polite … and they look across the bar at Matthew Shepard. They could see he is … an easy mark.”

  Slowly and carefully, Cal outlined key facts and evidence in the case — most of them indisputable — and gave the jury a preview of the testimony they could expect to hear from his principal witnesses.

  “At the conclusion … the evidence will be overwhelming for kidnapping, for robbery and aggravated robbery, and for premeditated first-degree murder with malice,” he told the jury at the end of his statement. “… We will ask for your guilty verdicts on all three counts.” (Robbery and aggravated robbery were merged as a single count.)

  Laramie attorney Jason Tangeman, with whom Cal had faced off the previous year when he tried Kevin Robinson for the murder of Daphne Sulk, delivered the opening statement for the defense. (Cal and DeBree had earlier dubbed Tangeman “the Boy Wonder.”) The thrust of Tangeman’s message to the jury was that Aaron had admitted his involvement in Matthew’s death, but it had not been premeditated:

  [Aaron McKinney] did not intend to cause the death of Matthew Shepard. Matthew Shepard did not die during the unbroken chain of events of a robbery. The defense … will argue that Matthew Shepard died during five minutes of emotional rage and chaos. The defense will argue that Matthew … died as a result of heat of passion. Matthew Shepard died because Aaron McKinney lost control of his emotions, and he became, in his words, furious.

  … You will hear his words in his confession. “I didn’t mean to kill him.”

  … The physical evidence will support and corroborate “I didn’t mean to kill him” …

  The question that is going to be before you, the jury, is why it occurred. You … are going to have to answer that question for Aaron McKinney. Why was he furious?

  Why did he blackout? Why did he feel possessed? Why did Aaron McKinney do what he did?

  During the weeklong trial that unfolded, Aaron’s attorneys never alluded to his personal relationship with Matthew, or what it involved. On the contrary, Tangeman had declared erroneously in his opening statement, “In fact, Aaron and Russell, when they leave for the bar [on the night of October 6, 1998] have never even heard the name Matthew Shepard.”

  The defense team also presented a very narrow view of Aaron’s sex-and-drug activities and what their impact may have been on his explosive violence. Instead, both the defense and the prosecution assumed — probably for the sake of their arguments — that Aaron was straight, thereby reinforcing the impression that Matthew’s homosexuality was the trigger that set Aaron off.

  Although Aaron’s attorneys raised the issue of his chronic methamphetamine use and called an expert witness to testify regarding the hyperactive behavior and paranoia that meth causes, they didn’t fully address the relationship between meth addiction, meth-induced psychosis, and extreme violence. In addition, the attorneys steered clear of Aaron’s extensive dealing activities, including at least one trip to a California meth lab.

  I learned in the course of my investigation, however, that one of Aaron’s main drug suppliers — whose name never surfaced during the case — was awaiting federal sentencing on interstate drug trafficking charges on the night of Matthew’s fatal beating in October 1998. The supplier, who was arrested on a Nevada highway in 1997 with a Mexican accomplice — while driving a vehicle loaded with meth and other drugs — had been on his way back to Laramie with the shipment when he was apprehended. According to several sources, Aaron and a few of his friends had worked for the supplier, distributing product for him.

  Knowing that the supplier had accepted a plea agreement and was soon to be sentenced in federal court, Aaron lied to local police about drugs to protect the supplier and keep his name out of the Shepard case. Knowledgable sources have also alleged that a couple of high-level police officers in Laramie were aware of Aaron’s deception, yet they had their own motives for allowing the story of an anti-gay hate crime to go unquestioned.

  In retrospect, I recalled that a friend of Matthew from the Denver circle had said Aaron and Matthew reported to different “co-captains,” and that both young men were at risk because of what they knew about the meth trade in Wyoming — and beyond. But my own investigation suggests there were more than two co-captains operating in Laramie at the time Matthew was killed, and that these rival operators weren’t always competitors and adversaries; they cooperated when it was in their interest to do so. According to former dealing cohorts of Aaron, his Laramie-based suppliers and the “top dogs” in Matthew’s Denver circle were well acquainted and, in some instances, were friends.

  Just as global cartels engage in ruthless wars over territory, which are often followed by peacekeeping deals and the brokering of new business alliances, small-scale drug markets across the United States are characterized by similar turf battles and continually shifting power dynamics. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Laramie — with its strategic location off I-80 — was no exception. During that same period, the buying, selling, and using of methamphetamine had also begun to ravage a staggering number of other communities across the country, including close-knit Native American reservations.

  Cal Rerucha, who has spent most of the last decade on the front lines of the meth crisis as both a state and federal prosecutor, called it “the worst drug this country has ever seen.” He also acknowledged, “Meth probably played a far larger role in the Shepard case than anyone understood at the time, including me.”

  Within a few years of Matthew’s murder, authorities in Wyoming were attributing up to 70 percent of crimes to meth. Then-governor Dave Freudenthal, who had played a significant behind-the-scenes role in the Shepard case as US attorney, stated frankly, “It doesn’t matter where we go in the state, meth is there. The whole issue is eating us alive.” Wyoming’s leading newspaper, The Casper Star-Tribune, agreed: “Wyoming faces no greater scourge than methamphetamine.”

  Statements like those would have been equally true in October 1998 when Matthew was killed, but the attention of the media, politicians, and special interests lay elsewhere.

  By 2010, however, Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star general who had served as Bill Clinton’s drug czar from 1996 to 2001 — a period when meth abuse was spreading rapidly in the United States — spoke unflinchingly about the magnitude of the crisis.

  “[Meth] is destructive of the human spirit like nothing we have ever seen,” he said, “… it is rapidly addictive … [like] a blowtorch that melts your mental, spiritual and physical person.”

  To many observers of the Laramie tragedy (including me initially), Aaron’s excessive rage could only mean one thing: pure hate.

  In an article marking the murder’s tenth anniversary in October 2008 (“Why the Shepard Murder was Different”), Cathy Renna, the former national news media director for the gay interest organization GLAAD — which played a decisive role shaping media coverage of the crime — emphasized again “the level of overkill, the brutality, and the graphic nature of the murder.”

  If, in truth, the attack on Matthew arose from an ongoing c
onflict over drugs and money and was further complicated by a covert sexual relationship between Aaron and Matthew, public understanding of what constitutes a hate crime deserves further debate. Ordinarily, hate crime is defined as a criminal offense motivated by bias — race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation — and usually involves violence, intimidation, or vandalism. But it is not the manner or degree of brutality or “overkill” that defines an act as a hate crime.

  In thousands of execution-style killings that have occurred in Mexico as a consequence of ongoing drug wars, unprecedented acts of savagery have been committed, including decapitations, torture, and mutilation. Yet hate is seldom cited as the driving force behind these drug crimes.

  It’s also worth mentioning that at the time Matthew was killed and in subsequent years, up to 80 percent of the methamphetamine sold and used in Wyoming was produced not in homespun local labs but in Mexico or by Mexican cartels operating in the United States. Moreover, in the decade following the murder, there was a wave of other meth-related homicides across Wyoming, crimes notable not only for their grisly violence but their suspected links to drug rivalries.

  According to the assessments of former drug czar McCaffrey in 2010, “[Firstly] meth is a cartel problem … [The cartels] are, hands down, the dominant criminal enterprise in America right now. They are the dominant criminal enterprise at the wholesale level in two hundred or more US cities.”

  These stark facts notwithstanding, the national outlook with regard to meth abuse has been improving over the past several years. Ambitious treatment programs and hard-hitting education programs warning of meth’s corrosive impact are underway in Wyoming and many other states. Simultaneously, gay communities across the country have rallied to confront the crystal meth epidemic.

  Nonetheless, I can’t help but wonder why the wake-up call wasn’t sounded earlier — and why the human injuries associated with meth addiction had to become catastrophic before we paid more serious attention. Such questions stand at the heart of nearly all tragedy, however, both personal and collective.

  With the passage of fifteen years since Matthew’s murder, it’s now possible to see which truths were illuminated by Aaron’s trial — and which remained hidden. It’s also not inconceivable that Russell’s case, and perhaps Aaron’s, might have had a different outcome had their juries learned, as I did, that Matthew was part of an interstate meth-trafficking circle, and that the buying and selling of crystal meth was only one of the activities he and Aaron shared.

  A few years ago, I finally gained access to court documents related to the case of former meth dealer Mark K, despite attempts by some officials in Laramie to prevent me from seeing them. According to several sources, Mark K established a friendship with Matthew in Denver in 1997 and eventually made him part of his dealing network in Laramie when Matthew moved there to attend the University of Wyoming. Mark K’s name — like others — never came up during the Shepard case, but two and a half years after Matthew was killed, Mark K was arrested on a variety of interstate meth charges going back to 1997. By that year, he, Matthew, and several others in the Denver circle were already enmeshed in significant dealing activities together. According to those court documents, some Wyoming and Colorado cops were also implicated in those activities.

  Although Mark K is said to be a born-again Christian now leading a very different life in a sparkling western suburb, law enforcement officers who arrested him in 2001 were astonished by the number of knives they found handily placed in the doorframes at his Laramie residence — along with an imposing sword over his bedroom door and several guns. TV cameras and in-house monitors also kept watch on the front of his house.

  In 2002, when Matthew’s one-time friend and associate stood before Judge Jeffrey Donnell — who three years earlier had presided over Russell’s case — he claimed that knives were his “hobby.” “I’m a part-time knife smith,” Mark K said. “I refurbish knives, make knives.”

  But Donnell wasn’t buying it. He pointed to Mark K’s “admitted years … of delivery of this poison [to Laramie]” and described his home “set up like a fort, with surveillance cameras and weapons and all kinds of stuff.”

  Regarding Mark K’s handling of monthly drug runs to the town since 1997, the judge added:

  By my mathematics … that adds up to around somewhere between four and five pounds. That is a lot of meth. That is more than enough to ruin the lives of many, many people. And you’re the guy that spread it around. That creates a consequence that you just can’t walk away from … You’re obviously a bright young man. And it is a real shame that you got yourself engaged in this kind of lifestyle; and even worse yet, that you chose to involve others in it with you …

  Matthew was apparently one of the “others” whom Mark K helped initiate into the ruinous world of meth trafficking, but Matthew did not share his friend’s luck of being “born again.” Still, it isn’t difficult to imagine that Matthew, had he lived, might have faced a similar harsh verdict from Judge Donnell.

  Cal’s best hopes for witness testimony in Aaron’s trial rested with his former girlfriend, the mother of his son, Kristen Price. It was her convincing testimony that would help him win the day in court, yet she told only half-truths and left out key facts.

  After my own initial interviews with Kristen, I began to examine what she’d withheld in her original accounts as well as her motives for helping to fabricate the alibi about Matthew making a sexual pass at Aaron and Russell. She gradually acknowledged to me that she’d lied to police and the media in the crime’s aftermath (“I would have said or done anything … at that point to get [Aaron] out.”)

  But Kristen also revealed more about the ups and downs of her life with Aaron in Florida and Wyoming, including his anxiety over his sexuality; how she’d helped him deal meth; and why she’d lied about the extent of their drug involvement. Most surprising, however, was Kristen’s personal suspicion — a suspicion shared by other key sources (including some in law enforcement) — about which individuals may have threatened Matthew on the weekend before the attack. Needless to say, the suspected individuals bear a strong resemblance to those alleged co-captains of the Laramie drug trade.

  From the opening day of the trial, Aaron’s attorneys tried to argue that he was really guilty of manslaughter, not first-degree murder. But the basis of their defense was split between four different factors. As Tangeman told the jury:

  Certainly you have the sexual advance itself [by Matthew Shepard] … starting to cause the anger. You have the drugs, and you have the alcohol fueling this. But there is a fourth piece of the puzzle that is important in this particular case. These are personal experiences that Aaron McKinney carried in his life. Personal experiences that he felt when this sexual advance was made on him.

  Aaron McKinney has [sic] some sexually traumatic and confusing events in his life …

  Tangeman proceeded to describe episodes of homosexual abuse that Aaron had experienced as a boy of seven and then mentioned a later incident involving his cousin, though he didn’t elaborate on the latter or explain its significance. It was also apparent again that: either Aaron’s attorneys were ignorant about when he’d actually met Matthew the first time (in 1997), or that Aaron had withheld the truth from them.

  The question will be, did Aaron carry this with him 15 years later … At 15 [sic] Aaron’s confusing, sexually traumatic past was still with him. He engaged in homosexual sex one time with his cousin.

  By age 20, just a year before he met Matthew Shepard, he is in Florida with his fiancée … Kristen. They go into a church … a gay and lesbian church. Aaron doesn’t know it’s a gay and lesbian church. He … sits with Kristen and he sees men holding hands and kissing, and he turned to Kristen and says, “We got to get out of here. I have got to go.” And they go outside the church, and Kristen finds him sobbing outside, and she asks, what is wrong with you? Is there something in your past you need to tell me about? And he will say no. But she won’t believe h
im.

  On October 6th, 1998, Aaron McKinney was certainly fueled by drugs and alcohol, but he was also haunted by a past. Haunted by a past that put him into a rage and triggered five minutes of emotional rage and chaos …

  The evidence is going to show that it is the … homosexual advance of Mr. Shepard that was significant to Aaron McKinney, that humiliated him in front of his friend, Russell Henderson. His past bubbled up in him. He was fueled by drugs. He was fueled by alcohol, and in his own words, he left his body.

  Did Matthew Shepard deserve to die? No, that is ridiculous. He didn’t deserve to die. No manslaughter victim deserves to die … But that is what Aaron McKinney is guilty of, manslaughter. Five minutes of emotional rage and chaos and Aaron McKinney committed manslaughter. Thank you.

  While it’s true that Aaron enlisted Kristen, Russell, and Chasity in his improvised gay panic alibi, there are no statements by Russell anywhere in the case record indicating that he saw Matthew make a sexual advance on Aaron that “humiliated” him.

  During this closely watched murder trial that offered little in the way of surprise — the public, after all, had already been convinced of Aaron’s guilt a year earlier — the main question was whether he’d receive the death penalty. But while the trial was in progress, the moment that eclipsed all others was the defense team’s attempt to introduce a so-called gay panic defense. That defense was not only rejected by the presiding judge, Barton Voigt, who today sits on the Wyoming Supreme Court, but its rejection also came to define the Shepard case itself — especially for gay Americans.

  In an attempt to argue the point, Dion Custis, one of Aaron’s attorneys, told Voigt, “We have never stated that this is a gay panic defense. The only place that has ever come from are [sic] from these people out here in the press. We are not putting on a gay, quote, panic defense.”