The Book of Matt (44 page)

Each time that Lucy recounted Russell’s decision, I could sense her own impossible burden.

“How do you think I feel as his grandma?” she asked reflectively but without self-pity. “It was
me
who convinced Russell to accept that plea. If he was [sic] left on his own, that would never have been his choice. I just couldn’t bear the thought of losing my grandson that way.”

A week after Russell was sentenced, police handcuffed him at the Albany County Detention Center, escorted him outside, and loaded him into a vehicle for the hundred-mile drive to the state penitentiary in Rawlins.

As the car headed south on 3rd Street, he stared numbly out the window, watching his hometown and the only life he’d ever known slip away like fragments in a dream — but an irrevocable dream from which he feared he’d never awaken, not until he was dead.

Once the vehicle got out past the edge of town, Russell gazed at miles of empty, windswept prairie, losing himself there. A ranch fence with pine-log poles ran parallel to the interstate for many miles, stretching as far as he could see.

In the end Cal’s strategy had succeeded: Russell agreed to change his plea in lieu of a trial that could potentially yield the death penalty. Yet Cal remained hopeful that Russell would testify against Aaron in his upcoming trial.

More than fourteen years later, however, the question remains: Did the enormous political, media, and financial pressures that overtook the Shepard case usurp Russell’s right to a fair trial? Apparently that was another irrelevant detail in the media’s relentless but often-superficial coverage of the story.

Several legal experts who commented at the time agreed almost unanimously that Russell’s chances of receiving the death penalty for his role as an accomplice were slim to none. His case might also have had a different outcome, a manslaughter conviction perhaps, had the actual relationship between Aaron and Matthew been known publicly — a relationship of which Russell said he was unaware.

(In both the Daphne Sulk and Cindy Dixon killings the same court handed down manslaughter sentences that were considerably less severe than Russell’s double life terms: In the former case Kevin Robinson was sentenced to a total of thirty-three years for a homicide in which he allegedly stabbed a pregnant teenager, then disposed of her body in the wilderness. As a result of “good time served,” Robinson, who is said to have an excellent prison record, is currently eligible for parole. Dennis Menefee, the perpetrator in the Dixon case, served only four years of a four-to-nine-year sentence.)

JoAnn Wypijewski, who reported on the Shepard murder for
Harper’s Magazine
and wrote an op-ed piece on the case for the
Los Angeles Times
six years after Matthew was killed, was the only journalist who seemed to notice the glaring disparities.

“Somehow that fact that Russell lost a mother — and Mrs. Thompson, a daughter — through another murder, a sex crime, never counted for much in all the stories about Laramie,” she noted.

But during my research trips to Laramie over the years, I’ve heard the same opinion expressed numerous times, usually by women. Elaine Baker, who’d partied in Doc’s limousine with Aaron and Matthew, and had also known Russell since he was a boy, stated pointedly:

Where’s the justice in this? [Menefee] is a grown man that took a woman out, raped her, threw her out in freezing … weather naked, and allowed her to stay out there and die a
slow, tortuous [sic] death. That must have been awful, to freeze to death.

And then you have these young kids [Aaron and Russell] that are barely old enough to be in a bar, on drugs … drugs controlling their whole lives … and [they] end up killing [Matthew] … And they’re in prison forever, can never get out …

But this guy that deliberately took [Cindy Dixon] up there [to Rogers Canyon] and raped her and killed her spent four years in prison. What’s wrong with this picture?

In the voluntary statement Russell had given to Detectives Rob DeBree and Jeff Bury after he was sentenced, he described how he felt when Aaron assaulted him at the fence. “Actually I was pretty scared,” he said. “Scared of the same thing [sic] would happen to me, that was happening to Matthew.”

The first time I’d read those words, I dismissed them as self-serving. But after I gained access to Russell’s previously sealed defense files and family court records, I no longer doubted the intensity of the fear he said he felt after he got into the truck and drove to the fence with Aaron and Matthew.

As I studied the case files of public defender Wyatt Skaggs, I found confidential documents that seemed to shed light on Russell’s silence — and why he might’ve been afraid to act more forcefully to stop Aaron from beating Matthew. A forensic psychiatrist who examined Russell while he was in jail awaiting trial reported to Skaggs that Russell was secretly terrified of Aaron: “He became more scared as [the crime] progressed … was too scared to even run away because McKinney knew where he lived … and won’t admit he is scared of Aaron even now.” The psychiatrist concluded that Russell “is not violent and … was scared to death.”

I was reminded again that one of Matthew’s friends, who had witnessed his extreme fear a couple of days before the attack, had overheard Matthew using those same words with Doc.

“[Matt told Doc] he was scared to death,” according to the friend.

I also remembered what one of Russell’s elementary school teachers had said: “The one thing Russell would never do is snitch — even when he came to school with bruises.”

But Lucy, his grandmother, had her own thoughts on his passivity. She shared a story that she’d also related to reporter JoAnn Wypijewski.

Once, as a boy of twelve, Russell confided in his grandparents that he’d watched his mother, Cindy, suffer “a terrible beating” at the hands of a boyfriend. “The first thing we asked Russell is why he hadn’t called us for help,” Lucy recalled. “He told his grandfather and me that he just freezes on the spot, because if he does something he’s sure to get a beating, too.”

But Russell’s regrettable history aside, he had done little to help his own cause following the attack on Matthew: He’d kept silent while Matthew was tied to the fence for eighteen hours, and he’d helped destroy evidence. At the time of his arrest, he’d also lied to police initially and then refused to tell them his version of events. And though he asked for a lawyer, even with his own attorneys he’d hesitated to speak out against Aaron.

Russell’s unwillingness to incriminate Aaron helped seal his own fate. On the other hand, Russell must’ve surely realized that his chances of surviving in prison weren’t good had he decided to talk.

I understood why both men had kept silent about certain subjects for their personal safety — each for his own reasons. Yet I was still baffled at how thoroughly the drug underpinnings of Matthew’s murder had been concealed on all sides of the case.

It was not until Russell had served four years of his double life sentence that I became convinced he was telling the truth. His acceptance of responsibility for his actions, coupled with simple remorse, began to preoccupy me:

It took me a long time to quit blaming [Aaron] … After a lot of thinking … about how I got here, I realized and understood that it was me. Whether influenced or not I
made my own choices and I chose to go along with what I thought was going to be a robbery. I involved myself by driving, tying [Matthew’s] hands, and worst of all by not stopping it. I did that not [Aaron] … Although I made those decisions I did not murder Matthew, nor did I chose [sic] or want that to happen. But, not only am I paying for my choices, which I accept and deserve, but I am also paying for [Aaron’s].

It was not only Russell’s words that caused me to empathize with him more. I’d also spoken by then with a social worker who led an intensive group-style program that Russell had enrolled in at Nevada’s High Desert State Prison — fittingly called “Victim Empathy.” Due to her pledge of confidentiality, the social worker could only talk to me with Russell’s consent. During a phone conversation, she quietly informed me that she’d been “impressed” by his participation in the group and that, in her professional opinion, he’d taken responsibility for his actions and seemed “truly remorseful.” Part of the group process, she said, was Russell coming to terms with the pain suffered by Matthew and his family as a consequence of his actions.

I also stayed in regular contact with Russell himself, attended his high school graduation at the prison when he received his GED and honor-roll recognition, and periodically checked up on his other inmate activities as well. Surely I never imagined that I’d be Russell’s lone guest at his graduation, but his grandmother and other family members hadn’t been able to make the drive to Nevada. The somewhat unusual ceremony, with a couple of dozen prisoners clad in caps and gowns, was presided over by the warden, who picked up an electric guitar afterward and jammed on a few songs with the all-inmate rock band that provided entertainment for the event.

I had to remind myself that
prison is still prison
and
a life sentence is beyond my comprehension
, but it was reassuring nonetheless to see that Russell could avail himself of opportuntities to keep his humanity intact, and to mature as a man rather than degenerate.

Knowing how much the nation at large and the gay community in particular reviled Aaron and Russell as an indivisible pair — both
said to be driven by the worst kind of hate — I hesitated to think where the rest of my journey might lead.

Had my growing concern for Russell compromised my ability to continue investigating the story as a journalist?

Though I kept those doubts to myself, I was not the only one to become sensitized to his plight. In late June 2004, after filming separate interviews with Aaron and Russell at the Nevada prison, I drove back to Las Vegas with
20/20
co-anchor Elizabeth Vargas. The first thing she said as I steered our rented Lincoln Navigator out of the parking lot was that interviewing Russell had been “heartbreaking.” By contrast, after her ninety-minute interview with Aaron, she complained of feeling a stifling sense of confinement. As soon as it was over she was anxious to step outdoors for some sunlight and fresh air.

Earlier that day the prison’s associate warden, “Mac” McBurney, had pulled me aside after he watched the filming of Russell’s interview.

“What the hell kind of lawyer did that kid have?” he asked sourly.

“A court-appointed one,” I replied.

I explained that since Russell and his grandmother had no financial resources he’d been represented by the county public defender — a lawyer whose alleged nickname among some of his Wyoming defense colleagues was “the Angel of Death.”

Hard-bitten by decades of prison duty, with “few illusions about convicts or the justice system,” Mac shook his head in disbelief that Russell, then twenty-six, was set to spend the rest of his life incarcerated.

“A shame,” he added glumly. “He doesn’t belong here.”

— PART FOUR —

The Circle Unbroken

THIRTY-FIVE

Closet Case

In my early communications with Ted Henson, I could see that his grief over losing Matthew was still an open wound. Sometimes he became irritable and impatient with me for no apparent reason, but beneath his anger I sensed a tender melancholy.

“I know Matt was not perfect but none of us are,” he wrote me in an email. “All I want is for the true meaning of Matt to come out, not something that is made up. Matt was far from [an] innocent person but he was a person that I loved and still do. No one in this world is innocent. Everyone has there [sic] little secrets.”

For more than five years after Matthew’s death, Ted kept many secrets of his own, safeguarding them along with Matthew’s prized collection of old bottles and his high school class ring, and a necklace filled with Matthew’s ashes given to him by the Shepard family. Ted said he had shied away from the media to protect his privacy, but also because several individuals had strongly advised him to conceal what he knew. Although he was reluctant to name those individuals at first, he eventually opened up.

Ted’s candor made me realize that he was just as determined, in his own way, to learn the hidden truths behind Matthew’s murder as I was — even when he found his efforts thwarted. He confided:

i was doing some digging in laramie … and I was told to back off of [sic] it and leave things alone. and that person that told me that was doc [O’Connor]. doc told me that I should not come back to laramie and [should] move on with my life. well, I told doc that one day I am coming back. and that his idle threats mean nothing to me …

I decided to ask Ted about a comment that had been made to me by Elaine, the Laramie woman who recalled partying one evening in
Doc’s limo and later at his home in Bosler with a small group that included Matthew and Aaron. According to her description of the threesome, Matthew was like “the little frail mouse, just no protection, and Aaron the cat, but yet Aaron has Doc the pit bull over him.” (I was careful not to identify Elaine by name to Ted.) With little hesitation he responded:

i think they said that because doc could corner matt and get matt to do anything doc wanted. doc … only admits to having sex with aaron, doesn’t he? he sure didn’t say anything about forcing matt one night into sex with him, did he?

Ted also claimed, “Doc ran the limos, yes, but he also ran guys … When other guys wanted a male for the evening, well, Doc fixed that up for them … [Doc] is dancing around with you.”

Ted’s revelations reminded me of my search for clues four years earlier in the Denver demimonde, including the hustler bar formerly known as Mr. Bill’s. I asked Ted on several occasions how he knew these things; I also explained that I couldn’t write about them unless he was more forthcoming.

In an email to me on February 18, 2006, he filled in another part of the story: