The Book of Matt (35 page)

“… How many times did they hit [Matt]?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “ ’Cause I asked him how many times he had hit him and he says he doesn’t remember, all he knows is he just started hitting him.”

“With the pistol.”

“Yeah. And he says he doesn’t know how many times Russ hit him or not [sic], so he said they both just hit him.”

“They were both hitting him? Do you know what Russ was hitting him with?”

“I don’t know … I don’t understand that part because
I don’t know if they were taking turns
” (italics mine).

During Chasity Pasley’s two interviews with police that morning and early afternoon, she cried so much that her eyes were bloodshot and swollen. In her first interview, which began shortly before 9
AM
, Chasity repeatedly told Detective Gwen Smith of the Laramie Police Department that she didn’t recognize the silver Boss jacket that police had found in Bill McKinney’s truck.

“Does [Russell] usually wear a coat?” Smith asked.

“No, he never wears a coat,” Chasity replied. “It’d be freezing outside and he won’t wear a coat.”

Smith broached the subject again a few minutes later. “And you said he never wears a coat … He wouldn’t have like a silver Boss coat?”

“No.”

“Does Aaron have —”

“No, not that I know of.”

“— Silver Boss — or you or Kristen?”

“No.”

“Okay … It looks like that new stuff … that’s really, really silver.”

“No, not that I know of.”

“Okay. So you haven’t ever seen that at your house?”

“Huh-uh.” (No.)

At about the same time in a neighboring office, however, Kristen insisted the silver Boss jacket belonged to Russell.

“I know Russ loves that coat …” she told Detective Fritzen. “I’ve seen that coat over their house ten million times. I saw him wear it a couple of days ago.”

Detectives Smith and DeBree conducted a second interview with Chasity that began just before noon.

“Do you know of Russ or Aaron using any illegal drugs?” Smith asked her.

“No, I know they were drunk and that’s all I know,” Chasity replied.

“Have you ever seen them or heard them talking about using any illegal drugs?”

“No.”

“Okay,” Smith said. “Rob, do you have some questions?”

“You said … that they met this guy at where [sic]?” he asked Chasity.

“The bar. This guy was hitting on Russ and Aaron.”

“Which bar?” DeBree continued.

“I don’t know. I think the Ranger or the Library.”

“Does the Fireside ring a bell to you?” he pressed.

Chasity answered, “It may. I don’t know. That’s what they told me, [the] Ranger …”

But minutes later, Smith posed the question again, “What about the Boss jacket?”

“It’s Russ’s,” Chasity admitted.

“Is it new?” Smith asked. “Does he wear it a lot?”

“He never wears a coat,” Chasity repeated. “I don’t know why he wore one that night.”

At regular intervals during the police interviews with Kristen, Chasity, and Russell, Cal conferred privately in his office with DeBree to be sure they were covering all the necessary ground. Already it
was becoming apparent to Cal that Kristen would be his most valuable trial witness and that he and the police investigators “needed to tread very carefully in order not to lose her.” Indeed, it was Kristen who would shortly lead them to Matthew’s wallet, hidden in a soiled diaper at her apartment.

But in the meantime, the county attorney’s office was being swamped by calls from the media asking for information about the suspects. When Cal declined to comment, “a few reporters got nasty,” he recalled.

Just as he was putting the phone down after one such query, DeBree walked in.

“He hung up on me, the rude s.o.b.,” Cal griped. “I guess I should spill my guts to him so we can have a mistrial before anyone’s even been arraigned.”

DeBree was feeling a little more optimistic since Kristen and Chasity were beginning to change their stories. But Cal, who was still piqued, was less forgiving.

“That’s great that these young ladies are turning into Mother Teresas right before our eyes,” he said. “I still want them booked as accessories after the fact.”

More often than not, DeBree could tell you exactly what Cal was going to say before the words tumbled out.

True to form, Cal reminded him for the third or fourth time, “Just guard that silver coat with your life, Rob. I don’t want any surprises like tainted evidence.”

Apart from the questions surrounding Russell’s jacket, Chasity’s statements intrigued me for several reasons. She, too, had lied about drugs, yet she later admitted to me that she had used meth regularly herself; that she had helped get rid of all their drug paraphernalia to conceal it from police; and that she’d been aware on the night of the crime that one of the homes she drove to with Aaron and Russell belonged to one of Aaron’s suppliers. It also seemed curious that she mentioned the Ranger and Library bars, where Matthew had been, respectively, on Monday night and for several hours on Tuesday.

More important, by the time Chasity took the witness stand in Aaron’s trial a year later she told a different story:

“During that summer [of 1998], did you ever see Aaron McKinney using drugs?” Jason Tangeman, Aaron’s attorney, asked while cross-examining her.

“Yes, sir,” she said.

“What drugs?”

“Methamphetamines and marijuana.”

“Did you ever see how often he used drugs?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How often did he use methamphetamine?”

“At first it was not very often, and then it got really often.”

“Did you ever see Russell use methamphetamine?”

“Yes, sir.”

“About how often?”

“Same as Aaron.”

“Where was Russell getting his methamphetamine?”

“From Aaron.”

Later in his cross-examination, Tangeman asked, “Up to that point — that evening [of the crime] — you hadn’t ever heard Russell or Aaron talk about robbing anyone, had you?”

“No,” Chasity said.

“And they hadn’t talked about hating homosexuals?”

“No, sir.”

Similarly, during the redirect examination that followed, Cal Rerucha inquired, “The question was asked about like or dislike of homosexuals; do you remember that line of questioning?”

“Yes, sir.”

“At that specific time frame, did Mr. Henderson make any reference to homosexuals?”

“What do you mean?”

“The individual involved in this,” Cal responded opaquely, yet obviously referring to Matthew.

“He just said that he was gay.”

Although Tangeman raised the objection that Chasity’s answer was
beyond the scope of the question — and the presiding judge sustained it — Cal immediately raised the subject again.

“Anything else, generally, about homosexuals that [Russell] had stated at that time?”

“No, sir.”

Interestingly, while Cal was eliciting Chasity’s admission that she knew a person had been seriously hurt yet she proceeded to help hide evidence, he asked her, “And did you know that person’s name?” “I knew it was ‘Matt’ from Kristen,” she said.

It seemed strange that Kristen — like Aaron — would refer to Matthew by the more familiar “Matt,” especially since the driver’s license, bank card, and other items in his stolen wallet identified him as
Matthew
Shepard. But this was not the only indication that Kristen knew a lot more about the real purpose of Aaron’s meeting with Matthew than she ever let on.

During a recorded interview in 2004, while talking about his plan to rob six ounces of meth that night, Aaron said, “I’m not going to take Kristen with me on K [methamphetamine], somebody’s got to stay home with the kid, you know? And I’m not going to take her on something like that anyways.”

“And she had no idea what you were planning?” Aaron was asked.

“Uh, no,” he said first. But then he promptly added, “Somewhat.”

However, according to a different source — a close male associate of Aaron who requested anonymity — he visited Aaron’s apartment on Wednesday afternoon, October 7, shortly before Kristen drove Aaron to the hospital and before Matthew was discovered at the fence. During his conversation with Kristen then, the source said, “she mentioned that Matt was into drugs.” If true, how did Kristen know that?

The extent to which Aaron personally covered up his relationship with Matthew (apparently with Kristen’s help) became even more evident when I gained access to Aaron’s “black book” — a small address book in which he kept the phone numbers of his friends, drug cohorts, and a few former girlfriends. The book is organized alphabetically according to first names. Not surprisingly, the page of listings under the letter M is the only one missing.

At one point during his second interview with Kristen, Detective Ben Fritzen turned the tape recorder off, left the room briefly, and then returned with Laramie Police Commander Dave O’Malley. O’Malley did his best to reassure Kristen that he found her highly credible.

“We’re going to go all the way to the wall for you,” he promised. “We do not want you to go to jail … We thank you for sticking with your guns because it takes a lot of guts to do what you did … I’ve got the utmost respect for you. I can see in your eyes … you’re not a criminal and you don’t have criminal eyes and you don’t have a criminal face, and anybody that looks at their child the way you did is got [sic], in my book, a lot going for them, okay.”

Kristen, who had gotten teary several times during the long interrogation, began to cry again.

O’Malley offered her a Kleenex. “[You’re] like me, I get crap in my hair and got snot running down my mustache and everything,” he said. “Just do good, okay.”

“I will,” she responded. “Thank you.”

“You betcha.”

By Thursday afternoon Kristen and Chasity had given detailed statements implicating themselves as accessories. But Russell, who had lied to Detectives Mark Beck and Rob DeBree when questioned early that morning, stuck to the alibi about meeting a guy at the Library who offered to take them to a party, refused to continue talking, and asked for a lawyer.

About 8:40
AM
, just before placing Russell under arrest for attempted murder, DeBree asked him if he knew who Matthew Shepard was.

“No, I don’t … no one by that name,” Russell answered.

A few hours later DeBree asked Chasity if Matthew had ever been in her home.

“I’ve never seen him before in my life,” she said. “I know Russ didn’t know him either. That’s why I don’t understand it.”

In Russell’s brief and incomplete statement to police — his only statement until he was sentenced six months later — there is no suggestion of anti-gay feelings or motives of any kind. All of the allegations
and inferences that the attack on Matthew resulted from an unwanted sexual advance would come from Kristen and Aaron, and to a lesser degree Chasity.

During her interview with Detectives Smith and DeBree, Chasity described how the four of them had gradually pieced their stories together in the early-morning hours on Wednesday and again later in the day:

“Kristen told me when I got there that night [after 1:30
AM
on Wednesday] … that Aaron had killed somebody. Aaron had beat somebody real bad … I go, ‘We have to go to the hospital, Russ is in the hospital’ … And she’s, ‘I know. I know what’s going on,’ and she told me that Aaron had beat some gay guy to death.”

“And so when did you guys get your stories straight?” Smith asked.

“Wednesday day after I got off of [sic] work … I went and got Russ and we went over to Aaron’s.”

“Okay,” Smith probed a few minutes later. “And … what did [Aaron and Russell] say to … the victim in this case? ’

“Russ told me Aaron said, ‘You are getting jacked; it’s gay awareness week,’ and he hit him in the truck once … and the guy asked him to stop, and Aaron wouldn’t stop.”

“The guy begged [him] to stop?”

“The guy asked Aaron, ‘Please don’t hurt me anymore. I’m sorry for hitting on you guys,’ and Aaron didn’t stop.”

“What was Aaron’s demeanor when he’s telling you this story?” DeBree asked Chasity.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “What do you mean by demeanor?”

“Well, is he kind of laughing about it ’cause the guy’s —”

“No, he was so scared,” Chasity said.

“He was scared?”

“Yes. He doesn’t know what came over him …”

“What was Russell like?”

“He was scared.”

TWENTY-NINE

The Consensus

Upon his release from Poudre Valley Hospital at about 11:30
PM
on Thursday, October 8, Aaron was arrested and charged with attempted first-degree murder before police escorted him back to Laramie. DeBree thought it would be best to allow him to have a good night’s sleep — and also give him time to think.

“I’m not real tired,” Aaron stated when he arrived at the Albany County Detention Center around 1
AM
.

After he was advised of his rights, he said he still wanted to tell his story.

Aaron’s recorded statement to DeBree and Fritzen the following morning — before he had sought the advice of an attorney — would become the basis of the state’s case against both him and Russell Henderson. The sometimes-muddled confession, which was rife with inconsistencies and lies, was made less than two days after he’d been admitted to the hospital with a hairline fracture to his skull (or what some described as a subdural hematoma). But later attempts by Aaron’s defense lawyers to have the confession deemed inadmissible would ultimately fail.