The Book of Matt (11 page)

In reality, the hospital physician who examined Matthew found no physical evidence that he had been sexually assaulted. And by the next morning Matthew withdrew his complaint and stated he had been too drunk to remember what happened.

Some would try to explain the episode in psychological shorthand, speculating that Matthew had experienced “flashbacks of Morocco,” which caused him to make false accusations that he had been raped again. Yet the available evidence from that evening suggests a very different story from the one Matthew originally told — and the media repeated.

According to Chris Hoogerhyde’s testimony in Aaron’s 1999 trial and my own interview with Hoogerhyde by phone — both of which confirmed what police had been told by Leslie Surber, a witness who worked at the Silver Dollar — Matthew made persistent sexual overtures to Hoogerhyde, who is straight, as they sat with friends by the lake. Hoogerhyde said he had repeatedly declined Matthew’s offers to take a walk around the lake and to join him behind a parked vehicle for oral sex. But it was not until Matthew grabbed his arm that he lost his temper and punched him in the face, Hoogerhyde said.

A previously sealed police report also appears to substantiate Hoogerhyde’s account. At 4:38
AM
on August 19 police received a phone call from the Holiday Inn in Cody regarding “a male guest in the lobby who is bloodied [and] says he was assaulted.” The report by Officer Scott Steward states:

I responded to the West Park Hospital to take a report of an assault. I was met at the hospital by Officer Barry Ivanoff. Ivanoff informed me that there was a male subject in the E.R. that is claiming to have been raped by three male subjects. I talked to Dr. Polley, the physician examining the victim, Matthew Shepard.

Polley indicated that he did not see any evidence of a sexual assault.

I spoke with Shepard and he stated that he had met this lady and three guys at the Silver Dollar and had left with them and went to a lake. Shepard stated that one of them told him to pull his pants down and when he did the man stuck his penis in him. Shepard had a swollen jaw and split lip. I asked Shepard what happened to his face. He stated, “I think I got hit when I tried to resist.”

Shepard continued on to say, “Things are real sketchy because I had been drinking.” I asked Shepard to describe the people. Shepard stated that he couldn’t describe them. I asked Shepard what happened after he was sexually assaulted. He responded saying, I think they took me back to my motel at the Holiday Inn.

I asked Shepard to fill out a statement and I would talk to him later.

… On 082198 Shepard came into the office and stated that he had talked to a lady named Leslie and found out that she was the one that drove him out to the lake … Shepard informed me that he did not wish to press charges as he did not remember the night very well.

… At approximately 14:40 hrs I met with [Leslie] Surber and a male subject identified as Chris Hoogerhyde … Surber stated they went out to Newton Lake after closing the Silver Dollar. She stated that Matthew was whining and said he didn’t have any friends and wanted to go with them.

… I asked about the assault and Hoogerhyde stated, “Yes I hit him and I’m sorry.” I asked Hoogerhyde to tell me what happened.

He stated as follows: We were out at the lake and Matthew started talking about being gay and how he liked men. He just kept talking about it and wouldn’t leave it alone. I don’t mind gays, I live with two lesbians. Matthew asked me to take a walk around the lake with him and I told him no. He then said, what are you afraid of do you think I might try something. I told him that I thought I could probably take care of myself, besides that, it’s a big lake and I don’t want to walk around it. We sat there for awhile and he kept asking me to walk around the lake. He then asked me to walk behind the van with him. I told him that I was not going anywhere with him and he grabbed my arm so I hit him. I felt bad for hitting him, but he wouldn’t leave me alone. We then took him back to his motel.

… Hoogerhyde and Surber both said that Matthew had stated several times that he had been raped 6 times in Morocco.

No further action taken.

Evidently, after Aaron’s defense attorneys learned of the Cody incident and other instances in which Matthew had apparently acted in a sexually aggressive or antagonistic manner, they thought they’d found credible support for their theory of “gay panic.”

In addition to Hoogerhyde, a different trial witness who had been present at the Fireside bar on the night Matthew was attacked, Mike St. Clair — also straight — would testify for the defense that Matthew, a total stranger, had solicited him sexually. Matthew “said something about ‘head’ … and licked his lips” suggestively, which St. Clair found “really offensive,” though he reacted less vehemently than Hoogerhyde had.

A thorny subject like this one is difficult to bring up in any forum, let alone attempt to analyze. But quite apart from the reprehensible strategy of the McKinney defense team, it does seem useful to explore whether Matthew did, in fact, exhibit a pattern of deliberately — or perhaps unconsciously — provoking confrontations that had a potential
to turn violent. This is not a matter of “blaming the victim” but rather a conscientious attempt to understand the complex relationship that sometimes exists between victims and perpetrators.

Were the incidents with Hoogerhyde and St. Clair examples of Matthew’s inclination to combat his fears by inviting danger — that is, a “counterphobic” reaction — that came from being sexually assaulted in Morocco?

Or did Dennis Shepard’s notion of his son as “The Bad Karma Kid” hint at a different — or perhaps parallel — dynamic at work?

Along with Hoogerhyde and St. Clair, I also interviewed a former Laramie bar owner, Jason Palumbo, who had known Matthew as a patron at his bar, Club Retro. I was surprised to hear from Palumbo that he had “permanently banned Matt from coming into my place” after an altercation he had with “a very large bouncer who worked at the door.” According to Palumbo, “Matt grabbed the bouncer’s crotch and made some wise-ass remark … We were just lucky the guy didn’t explode.”

After Matthew’s camping vacation ended on a depressing note — his shattered jaw was now being held in place with a wire — he joined his parents and younger brother, Logan, for a family reunion in Minnesota. They also dropped Logan off at the boarding school he was attending and then tackled the next thing on his parents’ agenda before they returned to their home in Saudi Arabia: “settling Matt in Laramie” for his first semester at the University of Wyoming.

ELEVEN

The Blue Masque

The somewhat idealized image I had of Matthew’s relationship with his father would later take on a more complex cast when I read letters Matthew had written to his college friend and lover Lewis Macenze while at home in Saudi Arabia over Christmas 1995. The media had barely mentioned Lewis in the aftermath of Matthew’s attack.

A slim, handsome, and articulate African American man — the son of a minister — he first met Matthew in September 1995 at the start of Matthew’s freshman year at Catawba College in Salisbury, North Carolina. Macenze was a senior at Catawba and his father served as pastor of a local church.

Reading Matthew’s letters, I realized the fracturing impact of his continual separations from his father:

My dad had to leave early this morning … I told you he was always gone. I don’t know when he’ll be back.

… I promised myself there would be no screaming this holiday between my father and I …

He hasn’t lost his temper at me yet — no yelling, which in itself is a miracle … One thing I can’t stand is being yelled at … Anything that needs to be yelled can just as easily be said and I’ll understand it just as well.

I first got acquainted with Lewis in emails and phone conversations, and later interviewed him in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he was working as a motel clerk. We also met up a second time in North Carolina so he could help me retrace Matthew’s steps there.

Initially reticent, Lewis gradually helped me see facets of Matthew I hadn’t glimpsed before — aspects that were largely missing from the deluge of media coverage and much of what has been written
since. He shared letters, photos, and other memorabilia, which he has kept devotedly stored in an antique wooden box since Matthew’s death. But it was Lewis’s painstaking journal writings and poems that provided the most telling chronicle of his relationship with Matthew, and the extent to which his grief is still an open wound.

One journal entry was written shortly after their first encounter in September 1995:

[Matt and I] met at the initiation of new members to the Blue Masque, Catawba’s theater arts group … My job was to blindfold the recruits and get them lined up before we stuffed them in cars and drove them out to the campsite. As I walked around, I came across this scrawny freshman who was complaining that he had to pee. Because he was cute, I volunteered to escort [him] to the nearest tree. In our brief time away from the group, we talked and I learned his name and that he spoke German, which I do, too; I quickly felt das sting auf cupid!

According to Lewis, he and Matthew bonded quickly as friends and confidants. They “talked nonstop” about their vastly different backgrounds, yet thrilled at their mutual love of theater and the performing arts, and their common interest in politics. Over the next several months Lewis wrote of their courtship, as they slowly became lovers:

On this campus of 800 students, there are only a few openly gay ones. My friends Kristine and Amy are desperately trying to fix me up. Amy convinced Matt to meet her at the computer center at the exact time I was to meet Kristine, who just happened to be at the next station. We all talked until the girls disappeared. I asked Matt to join me outside for a cigarette.

He’s so classy in his designer jeans, smoking Dunhill’s. We sat at the old bell tower, chatting, smoking, laughing as if we’ve known each other for years. He told me of his
family, his travels and studies, and I of mine. We sat under the bell tower for hours watching the night go by. (October 3, 1995)

It’s my 21st birthday. I didn’t get to go out drinking or even make it to my party because I was in rehearsal until almost 1 am. I was surprised to see Matt sitting in front of the dorm with a single birthday balloon and a Mickey Mouse doll waiting for me. I was going to drop off my bags, then walk to get some cigarettes and was delighted that he wanted to come.

When we returned to the dorm, there were those few seconds of uncomfortable silence: not wanting to end the night, not wanting to make the first move. I finally invited him up to my room for some boxed wine where the conversation continued. We sat on the floor: me Indian style, he wrapped around me. Our pact was to keep the night innocent and we did. Just talked and kissed, then slept … (October 26, 1995)

Until I met Lewis, I had come across surprisingly few references to Matthew’s dating experiences, boyfriends, or a love life of any kind. As JoAnn Wypijewski shrewdly noted in her 1999
Harper’s
article, there was an all-too-easy tendency “to caricature [Matthew] as a child-saint, because to think of him as a man evokes a sexual experience no one wants to know.”

In April 1996, shortly before Matthew withdrew from Catawba to undergo psychiatric treatment in the city of Raleigh, he and Lewis attended a campus political event together. Matthew had already confided in Lewis about his sexual assault in Morocco as well as other issues that had been troubling him. But the bright tone of Lewis’s journal entry gave no indication that Matthew was depressed:

What a fantastic Tuesday! Matt and I went to see [Republican senators] Jesse Helms and Bob Dole speak today at the gymnasium. The highlight … was watching Libby Dole
and how she worked the crowd, and even though we were supposed to be outside protesting with the others we both enjoyed her to the point of wanting to become Young Republicans. Then Jesse reminded us why we weren’t.

We held hands throughout the event, trying to bring attention to ourselves and left the building like that when some reporter came up to us and asked if we’d give an interview. It was weird talking to the guy, Matt and I like a real couple finishing each other’s thoughts. (April 9, 1996)

TWELVE

Indian Springs

Other than Matthew Shepard himself, no one involved in the Laramie tragedy perplexed me more than Russell Henderson. At the start of my investigation, I accepted as fact that he and Aaron McKinney had participated more or less equally in beating Matthew, an impression first solidified in the onslaught of media coverage following the attack.

Time
magazine, citing unnamed police sources, reported: “McKinney … apparently taking turns with Henderson, began pounding Shepard on the head with a .357 Magnum revolver.” Other leading news organizations stated conclusively that both men beat Matthew. According to
The Denver Post
, “the assailants kept hitting him … until they believed he was dead.” Yet two weeks after Matthew died,
U.S. News and World Report
said it was Henderson who “allegedly” pistol-whipped him.

Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson were repeatedly compressed by the media into a single personality with an identical set of motives.
The New York Times
was one of the few news organizations to hint at serious character differences. “If Russell Henderson was a quiet follower,” the
Times
stated ten days after the attack, “Aaron McKinney was a man with a short fuse.” But long after both men were convicted, confusion persisted over the real nature of Russell Henderson’s involvement.