The Book of Matt (45 page)

doc’s relationship with aaron was basically a sex and drug issue …

one night … we was [sic] in the limo, matt, me, aaron, and another older guy. I don’t remember his name. all i knew about that guy was he was a president at some bank in Denver, that is all any of us knew about him. doc came straight out and told him in the limo that if he wants to play it is going to cost him. the guy then asked about me and matt, i told him no. but doc had us in the middle of nowhere. [He] stopped the limo [and] told me he wanted to talk to matt and me.

doc said either we do this or we get left out where we was [sic]. and that he wasn’t going no [sic] further until
after it was over. so we did it. in the back of a limo on the side of the highway.

when it was over and we went home i got out of the car, so did matt. doc told matt that matt owed [him] some money and that was payment. that pissed me off even more. i would not talk to matt for a couple of days after that.

Ted also had more to say about Aaron — and the incident when all four of them were at a Denver gay bar together. The bar was most likely Mr. Bill’s, though Ted said he couldn’t remember the name of the place, as some eight years had passed.

one guy when he came back [inside] I was drinking at the bar and he told me that he gave [Doc and Aaron] 40.00 so he could fuck aaron. i told him [Aaron] was nasty.

… aaron screwed matt at least 5 times that I know of. matt made me feel sorry for him a lot and I would do anything for matt. so when matt would go get high, his payment to aaron was ass, and aaron would only do it if aaron, matt and I would have a 3 way together.

as for me in the escort thing, i did it only 10 times with matt. and out of those, 6 times the limo was used. and aaron was there on almost all those times, but he was in the front with doc.

… it is not something that I am happy about either. in fact i feel trashy about it. if you want to … let [Aaron] know that I am telling you everything then do so … i wasn’t scared of aaron then and i am still not. back then aaron was a loud mouth that could not back anything without help from someone.

… if you talk to russell tell him I said hello and i am going to do what I can [to help him]. and not to give up …

Ted mentioned something as well about Aaron’s cousin “Bear” (Adrian McKinney), whose well-documented involvement with methamphetamine continued long after the Shepard case was over:
bear came to the bar in denver, and sold stuff there with aaron from time to time. everyone knew that.

But Ted’s statement about Bear also appeared to shed light on another unresolved question. When I’d first interviewed Duane and Rob, the bartenders at Mr. Bill’s, they seemed convinced that
both
of Matthew’s assailants had hustled there, after seeing their photos on TV. Actually, what Duane and Rob were most certain of is that the men had come to the bar as a pair. Since I’d found no other information indicating that Russell had hustled or sold drugs — and Ted acknowledged that he’d seen Bear at the bar but never Russell — I concluded that the person Duane and Rob had probably seen at Mr. Bill’s, accompanying Aaron, was Bear.

If Aaron denied these truths again, Ted told me confidently, “Ask [him] if he remembers a ’90 Pontiac.” Ted was sure Aaron, who loved cars as much as he did, would remember his light blue Bonneville.

But Aaron had stopped talking to me by then. During our last interview at a Nevada prison, he had let me know how infuriated he was about the
20/20
report and what we’d revealed about his sexuality. Since I’d learned beforehand that he was very upset with me, I asked one of the head correctional officers to search Aaron thoroughly before leaving the two of us alone in an unguarded conference room near the warden’s office. Aaron had boasted more than once that, with two life sentences, he had “nothing to lose,” so I wasn’t taking any chances in the event he was concealing a razor blade or other homemade weapon.

Ted’s statement that Aaron “could not back anything without help from someone” called to mind something Cal had mentioned years before: “Aaron was dangerous if he had help.”

I also remembered that Aaron, after pistol-whipping Matthew repeatedly, had threatened to give Matthew’s ID’s to “certain people” — an act of bullying in extremis.

“Hell, Aaron has no feelings,” Ted wrote in another email more than a year later, referring again to his joint encounter with Matthew and Aaron. “I was there one night on a 3 way with Matt and Aaron, and Aaron has no feelings, trust me. I [saw] that.”

During an earlier interview with Doc O’Connor in one of his hangar-sized warehouses in Bosler — a few yards from the shiny stretch limo that both Aaron and Matthew liked to ride in — he was asked, “Did you think that Aaron was bisexual?”

“No, I know he’s bisexual,” he said. “There ain’t no doubt in my mind. He
is
bisexual. Obviously.”

Doc, who claims he doesn’t know Ted and denies that he arranged for the sexual services of other males, was willing to talk about his decision to “out” Aaron, however.

“Did [Aaron] want you to keep his bisexuality a secret?” he was asked.

“Actually he did,” Doc replied. “He said, ‘Give me your word that this will never come out.’ ”

“Why was he so concerned about that?”

“Well, because he didn’t want it to come out. And I told him, ‘That’s fine. No biggy.’ The reason it’s coming out [now] is because I’ve dwelt on this for … months and years; because he needs to face his reality in life, of what was going on at the time … Aaron was kind of like, in the closet … or [a] closet case, and he just never wanted to come out.”

“Do you think [Kristen] knew he was bisexual?”

“I’d bet dollars that she knew.”

“Why are you sure she knew …?”

“She said that her [sic] and him and somebody else was in the same bed before. I can’t remember the other guy’s name. So, it wouldn’t be a big deal. Everybody in the world wants to make bisexuality a big deal, or gay a big deal. And it’s not really a big deal in Wyoming. It’s just not really discussed.”

We also asked Doc, “Why do you think … Aaron … was adamant about denying [to us] that he’d ever had sex with a man?”

He responded firmly, “I’ll take a lie detector test any day you want about Aaron McKinney. Period … Aaron McKinney is not telling you guys the truth in that particular situation. It’s not true.
Period
” (emphasis in original).

According to Stephanie Herrington, a Laramie woman who described herself as Doc’s “part-time girlfriend” at the time of the murder, she,
too, had been with Doc, Aaron, and Matthew at an all-night party — the same one Elaine recounted to me in telling detail.

My first conversation with Stephanie took place in a rickety, second-floor apartment behind the Laramie post office, where she was living at the time. She told me timidly that Doc had instructed her not to speak with me unless he was present. But she said she wanted to talk and didn’t want Doc telling her what to say.

Later I interviewed Stephanie again at a sidewalk café in downtown Laramie — together with her ex-husband, Mark Herrington. Both of them mentioned that Doc had tried to silence other people in the past and that he sometimes made threats.

Eventually Glenn Silber and I filmed an interview with Stephanie for
20/20
, but it wasn’t included in the final program. We simply had too many interviews to condense into a one-hour time slot.

Stephanie — like Elaine — said that Doc’s party, which had started in the limo and ended at his home in Bosler, took place “a couple of weeks before [Matthew] was killed.”

We told Stephanie that Aaron had informed us of his involvement with methamphetamine and asked her, “Were you aware of that?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“Is it your impression that Matt was into these things as well?” Glenn probed.

“Yes, he actually tried to buy some from Doc …” she stated. “Matthew Shepard actually bought some from Doc. He was giving Doc money in the limousine at the time, so I know he was buying drugs from Doc O’Connor.”

When asked how she would describe Matthew, she said, “He was an easygoing, loving guy, easy to get along with … But it wasn’t a hate crime.”

“Is it your sense that when Matthew left [the Fireside Lounge] with [Aaron and Russell] that he had drugs on him?”

“
Mm-hmm
[yes],” she nodded. “And they were trying to collect and he wouldn’t give it to them … They went out together because they were interested in Matthew because he had drugs and … Matthew didn’t want to give them the drugs.”

“How do you know this?” Glenn pressed.

“It’s a fact.”

“It’s a fact?”

“
Mm-hmm
. I know he had drugs because he was trying to buy them from Doc … I was there when Matthew purchased the drugs from Doc.”

“How long … before the attack?”

“That was the night when I was in the limo with them and I heard them talking about drugs and they were passing money in the back. I turned my head and looked at them.”

Glenn pressed Stephanie again about her repeated references to “a drug deal gone bad.”

“So is this just something that people [in Laramie were] talking about, that that’s what they think happened?”

“I’m sure it happened,” she said.

“You’re sure it happened?”

“
Mm-hmm
.”

“Based on what?” Glenn continued. “Just talk to me. Based on what?”

“On what people said and … from what I know,” she responded.

Later in the same interview, we asked Stephanie to revisit the night of Doc’s party for us. She stated:

Okay, we all met at the Buckhorn [Bar] … And then we just left the Buckhorn, gathered up in a limo and drove from there to [Doc’s] house in Bosler. And then that’s where they decided to play around … [Doc] asked me if I wanted to, with Aaron and Matthew, and I said “No,” and that’s when they paired off in … the small guest room that he had … Doc and Aaron McKinney and Matthew Shepard paired off … and did their thing … sexual activities.

But both Stephanie and Elaine agreed that the activities had started earlier in the limo, and that Doc had hired another chauffeur to drive that night.

“We were on the highway heading to Bosler and they were actually playing around in the back,” Stephanie recalled. “… I was in the front seat and then [Doc] had the window rolled down … That’s how I saw. I just turned my head and, ‘Oops.’ ”

According to Elaine:

I believe it started out with Doc telling Aaron and Matthew to do some stuff, and then Doc ended up getting involved in it later before we got to Bosler … It was mostly oral …

I was trying not to look back at them too much because I just wasn’t really interested in what was going on back there. But … the money exchange and stuff went on … before they started doing the oral … thing.

I didn’t really know exactly for sure what was going on at that point. Until Doc started talking … to mostly Aaron about … “You need to get my money from that son of a bitch” or something.

Earlier, I’d asked Elaine, “So what did you think was going to go on once you got up to Doc’s place, given what you [saw] in the limo?”

“I have no idea,” she responded, “I was pretty nervous about it. I didn’t want to go up there. [Pause.] To be perfectly honest with you, I thought that there would be some drug exchange or … they were going to get some drugs or something. I thought that that’s what would happen.”

But Elaine said that while they were riding in the limo:

I got the impression that Aaron already owed Doc some money for drugs or for — having sex with another man. And that Doc was unhappy about Aaron needing more [money] when they still owed him, and so they were kind of having a conversation about that …

I can’t really remember word for word … It was mostly Doc that did most of the talking. Aaron was just answering to Doc.

… I just — I remember the feeling, the tense feeling in there. I remember the anger that Doc was expressing to
Aaron … something to the effect of, “I can’t believe you let this son of a bitch get away with that … he owes me money.”

… Doc would talk about [Aaron] being with somebody and, “Where’s the money?” … Doc didn’t try to hide it at all. He didn’t try to hide the fact that Aaron was working for him. And Doc would come right out and tell people. He would offer Aaron to people, right, flat out. Flat out. He would just offer him …

I had [also] heard Doc and Aaron talking about pimping Matthew out … so I knew [the attack] wasn’t because [Matthew] was gay and it made me angry. It made me really angry that it just blew over as a hate crime, that, you know, because Matthew Shepard was gay. It had nothing to do with Matthew Shepard being gay, nothing. It was about drugs and money.

… They were all friends … [but] Russell wasn’t even really involved in that little clique … The main thing was — with Matthew and Aaron and Doc — was sex. And drugs.