The Book of Matt (49 page)

Despite a lot of joking back and forth about who was to blame for getting us lost, I could feel Ted’s trepidation about meeting Russell the next morning. He admitted as much but tried to reassure both of us.

“Look, I bet you anything Russell’s feeling the same thing right now,” he said. “Don’t you think he’s got a million things running through his mind, too?”

The following morning, after a country breakfast of eggs, bacon, ham, and grits, topped off with biscuits and gravy (“the Hungry Man Special”) — Ted had picked at his food while I anxiously stuffed myself — we got in the car and climbed another steep road to the flattened hilltop where the prison sits.

Ted later recalled how he felt during the trip and afterward:

On the plane ride there all I thought about was what to say and how to react towards [Russell].

The morning of going to visit [him], I was very nervous and confused. I was wondering if what I was doing was right or was it wrong.

But I knew I had to see Russell; he was one of the last people … to have touched Matt when Matt was alive.

When we got [into] the prison there was a very long walkway to the visiting room … That seemed like the
longest walk. [I had] knots in my stomach but felt alright since Steve was there with me.

Once I met Russell, I just sat there and listened to [him] speak for a while. He said, “I’m sorry,” I cannot remember how many times …

And Russell told me exactly what happened that night. I knew — I could see it in his eyes and face that he was not lying to me.

Russell and I spoke of a lot of things and the visit became more relaxed and more comfortable.

The reason I had to see Russell is because I felt the need and also [because] Matt was a very forgiving person. I felt that if Matt would have lived he would have done the same thing that I did and [gone] to see Russell.

Since my visit, and before my visit, we’ve written back and forth many times and are continuing to [write]. I feel that Russell is all I [have] left of Matt … I do believe in Russell and I am going to continue my friendship with [him] for the rest of my life. Or until Russell no longer wishes to stay in touch with me.

The hours of our prison visit hurried by. Three or four times I got up and went to the vending machines on the opposite side of the room, returning with cans of soda, chips, candy bars, and other junk food. But really I just wanted to leave the two men alone for a while and allow them some semblance of a private conversation without me noting every word they uttered. For this same reason, I won’t attempt to reproduce here the many things that were spoken about that day, with the exception of one brief exchange that has stayed with me over the past five years.

Early in the visit, Ted looked at Russell sternly. Ted’s face was drained of color and his lips were trembling slightly, as he confronted Russell with the question that had been troubling him more than any other.

“Why didn’t you let someone know Matt was out there — just call someone?” Ted asked in a muted voice.

Russell nodded gently for several seconds, yet the two men never broke eye contact.

“It’s the biggest regret of my life,” he said. “It’s something I think about every day and wish I could change.”

Ted continued to stare at Russell. Gradually his face began to soften and the blush returned to his cheeks.

I was at a loss about how to interpret this moment — and even how to “report” it.

But later that afternoon when the presiding officer announced over the loudspeaker that visiting hours were over, I said my good-byes to Russell and then watched as Ted leaned over the low barricade that ran down the middle of the table, separating visitors from inmates. As the two men shook hands, Ted extended his other arm around Russell and hugged him warmly. I saw Russell reciprocate but then I looked away, aware again that this shared gesture belonged to them alone.

THIRTY-EIGHT

Missing Pieces

During the years that I’ve been preoccupied with Matthew’s murder, I’ve come to believe that the complex truths of his tragedy — and the parallel tragedies of Aaron and Russell — have a universal meaning that defies and transcends the politically correct mythology that’s been created as a substitute. There’s no doubt that the violence inflicted on Matthew triggered a national awakening about the harsh realities of anti-gay hate, just as there is no doubt that other positive developments followed on the heels of his murder, including a long-overdue expansion of civil rights — a mission that remains incomplete as of this writing. But the more I learned about Matthew’s life and his suffering, the more convinced I became that clinging to a partly false mythology could never yield the subtler, more powerful meanings of his sacrifice. It would also be a disservice to Matthew’s memory to freeze him in time as a symbol, having stripped away his complexities and frailties as a human being.

An obvious paradox is that I didn’t know Matthew personally. Nonetheless, I grew suspicious of the truncated portraits of him that I found in media accounts and official records. It seemed as if everyone who knew Matthew (and many who did not, me included) had their own take on his vulnerabilities and misadventures and how they all came to be. Over time, a handful of Matthew’s friends — together with the insightful public testimonies of his parents — persuaded me of the value that could be gained from peering into those corners of his life that have been invisible or mostly cast in shadow, and attempting to understand the part they may have played in the tragedy of October 6, 1998.

Early on, I’d read a variety of remembrances by people who had known Matthew intimately, which only amplified my interest in him. Though these statements sometimes obscured as much as they
revealed, they invited further exploration of Matthew as a human being.

One particular quote that I’d come across in a 1999
Vanity Fair
article stayed with me over the years — made by Romaine Patterson, a lesbian friend of Matthew.

“Matt had emotional scars — he had faced this kind of attack throughout his life,” she said. “He was a perpetual victim. That’s how he became the person that he was.”

Not only was I curious about her mention of “emotional scars … throughout his life,” but I also noticed that it differed somewhat from an observation Matthew’s father had made. “Violence was not part of [Matt’s] life until his senior year in high school,” Dennis Shepard stated. He spoke explicitly of “the mental anguish that Matt dealt with on a daily basis after his rape in Morocco.”

Yet Matthew’s mother had commented at various times that “he never had a best friend”; “he had a real restless, searching quality”; and “I think he always felt out of place.” Five years after the murder, though, Judy noted that her son had lived his life true to himself. “[Matt] didn’t live a lie,” she told a reporter for the
Casper Star-Tribune
. “He was happy in his skin. I don’t know how many people can say that.”

Still, I continued to reflect on Romaine’s belief that Matthew “became the person that he was” because he’d been “a perpetual victim.” Like Tina Labrie, Ted Henson, Lewis Macenze, and other confidants of Matthew, Romaine seemed to be suggesting that her friend’s emotional scars had older roots than Morocco.

My reason for probing into this sensitive territory is that I hoped to understand what may have been behind Matthew’s addiction to drugs and alcohol; what drew him into the Denver circle; and, ultimately, why he may have befriended Aaron.

Lodged in the back of my mind was the timeworn metaphor Cal had used in court during the Daphne Sulk case. “Some people have said that Daphne was not afraid of [her killer],” he’d told the jury. “Well, a fly is never afraid of the spider’s web until it’s too late.”

According to informed sources who requested anonymity on the subject of Matthew’s childhood and adolescence — presumably because some records remain sealed and others have been expunged
— Matthew was a victim of sexual abuse and molestation as a boy and as a teenager. Just days before he was killed, while in the throes of fear and depression, he identified three of the perpetrators. According to my sources, all were adult males: an alleged member of his Casper church, an older friend whom he’d turned to for guidance, and a relative (not a member of his immediate family).

These same sources believe it was these earlier traumatic experiences — and not Morocco — that precipitated Matthew’s history of psychiatric ailments and self-medicating with alcohol and drugs. Apparently, his wounds from being sexually victimized also manifested in another common, but tragic pattern: The victim becomes a perpetrator himself.

At age fifteen Matthew was arrested for molesting two eight-year-old boys in his Casper neighborhood. According to a relative of one of the boys, Matthew received counseling to help him deal with the incident; he’d also attempted suicide and been hospitalized, she said. But a former Casper police officer who was assigned to the case expressed discomfort at how the later attack in Laramie had been mishandled by the media, as well as the fact that Matthew’s juvenile arrest record had been quietly concealed. (Court files show that on February 25, 1999, Cal filed a motion requesting that “the defense be barred from reference to or testimony regarding any information … which may be contained in police reports regarding Matthew Shepard, obtained from the Casper Police Department as well as juvenile records of Matthew Shepard obtained from any Natrona County [Wyoming] court records.”)

As a result of these and other discoveries, my view of Matthew as a perpetual victim took on new meaning, but not for the reasons suggested by the popular mythology. I also came to see some of the personal insights of his family and friends in a new light.

“Whenever [Matt] learned of someone suffering, it affected him personally,” his friend Tina had said. As a witness to his deepening crisis in his final days, she also recalled that he’d been “in a lot of emotional pain … wishing he had more security … feeling very alone, lonely, isolated.”

It was no longer such a mystery to me why Matthew had fallen in with an improvised “family” of dealers — or why he’d become a
dealer himself. Since his teen years, Matthew had used a variety of drugs to cope with his isolation, not to mention the pain of being victimized sexually. But as a part of the Denver circle he gained a sense of belonging and even empowerment, however illusory or short-lived. His dealer friends whom I interviewed talked about how much they respected and looked up to him; and I imagine he, in turn, mistakenly looked to them to provide the security he longed for.

With this new understanding, I reconsidered some of the insights offered by Matthew’s father — and others.

“[Matt] was naive to the extent that, regardless of the wrongs people did to him, he still had faith they would change and become ‘nice,’ ” Dennis Shepard had said. “They would hurt him and he would give them another chance.” He also spoke of his son as “the perfect negotiator” who “would walk into a fight and try to break it up. He could get two people talking to each other again as no one else could.”

Tragically, these same attributes could be dangerous if you were negotiating in a criminal underworld — or with Aaron McKinney while he was strung out on meth.

EPILOGUE

In April 2013 I returned to Wyoming for my last visit in connection with the writing of this book. Over the years the trip had become a welcome — and by then necessary — ritual: pick up a rental car at the Denver airport, drive north on I-25 to Fort Collins, and then head northwest on Highway 287 to Laramie.

No trip to Laramie would be complete if I didn’t check in with Cal Rerucha and his family, and with Russell’s grandmother Lucy Thompson. I’d made several good friends and met many acquaintances there, but it was the Rerucha family and Lucy who invariably made me feel welcome in their homes and their lives. Despite the sensitive nature of my research and reporting — and my continual delving into their lives — I was never made to feel like an outsider once they grew to trust me. On the contrary, their steady friendship encouraged me to pursue the truth wherever it might lead, at whatever cost.

Whenever time allowed, I’d also spend a day visiting Russell — initially at the prison in Torrington, Wyoming; and more recently at the state penitentiary in Rawlins, where he’s expected to remain for the foreseeable future, if not the rest of his life. Aaron broke contact with me in 2005 for reporting on “that sex stuff” and for mentioning on TV that he has a son.

As I drove through Fort Collins that afternoon, I could see the skies beginning to change dramatically. Earlier in the day Denver had appeared to be in the throes of spring, but in parts of northern Colorado and Wyoming a late-winter snowstorm had already hit. It was the third week in April, which meant little if you were trying to predict what kind of weather you’d encounter in the Rockies.

Perhaps I’d made a mistake not renting a four-wheel-drive SUV. If I got stuck on the sixty-five-mile stretch of highway between Fort
Collins and Laramie — an expanse of rugged, hilly plains — it would be awhile before help came. I also wondered if the Wyoming interstate would be open the following day, so I could make the drive to visit Russell at the penitentiary. The car radio was saying that portions of I-80 had been closed due to heavy winds and snowfall.

I’d spent time in Wyoming during every season and had learned from the locals to pay close attention to the weather — especially the fierce winds.

Oddly, though, as I left Fort Collins and drove north on 287, I had only a dim sense that a thirteen-year journey would soon end. I was finishing a story,
yes
, but the story and its characters had become etched into my life, as had Wyoming and its “hometown.”

I’d watched from a distance as Cal’s two sons had grown up: from enthusiastic teenagers to hardworking college students, and, now, mature young men with careers. I’d sat in Lucy’s living room when it was overflowing with kids and she was still running her beloved daycare program, but also in more recent days when her leg has been crippled by disease and a pensive quiet hangs over her home. And I remembered Russell as a young “lifer” in his early twenties when we’d first begun to talk, and reminded myself he was now approaching the age of thirty-six.