October 10, 1998
|
Gay Man Beaten and Left for Dead; 2 Are Charged
By James Brooke
Laramie, Wyo. -- At first, the passing bicyclist thought the crumpled form lashed to a ranch fence was a scarecrow. But when he stopped, he found the burned, battered and nearly lifeless body of Matthew Shepard, an openly gay college student who had been tied to the fence 18 hours earlier.
On Friday, the 22-year-old University of Wyoming student was in a coma in critical condition. At Albany County courthouse here, Russell Henderson, 21, and Aaron McKinney, 22, were arraigned on charges of kidnapping, aggravated robbery and attempted first-degree murder. Two women described as friends of the men, Kristen Leann Price, 18, and Chastity Vera Pasley, 20, have been charged as accessories after the fact to attempted first-degree murder.
Shepard's friends said that he did not know his alleged tormentors. Laramie police say the primary motive was robbery, although court papers filed Friday indicate Shepard's homosexuality may also have been a factor. Shepard's friends call the attack a hate crime.
"He was very open about his sexuality," Tina LaBrie, an anthropology student here, said of her friend. "I admired him for that because it is very courageous to be yourself even when others disagree."
A few hours before he was beaten, Shepard, a slight 5-foot, 2-inch man who wore braces on his teeth, had attended a meeting of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered Association, said Walter Boulden, a friend of Shepard's.
"He was sitting at the bar, having a beer, when two men came up and talked to him," Boulden, a 46-year-old university lecturer of social work here, said today between tears. "He indicated he was gay, and they said they were gay, too."
"Now, he is in a coma," continued Boulden, who visited his friend at a hospital in Fort Collins, Colo., on Thursday. "I don't think anybody expects him to pull through."
Shepard, who spoke Arabic and German, studied at a boarding school in Switzerland before moving back to the United States to attend the University of Wyoming, the alma mater of his father, an oil rig safety inspector in Saudi Arabia. Matthew Shepard was born in Casper, the capital of Wyoming's oil belt, and spent much of his youth there.
But six weeks after
returning to Wyoming and enrolling as a freshman here, Shepard fell into a depression,
said Ms. Labrie and her husband, Phillip. Accustomed to life in Europe and Denver, this
foreign language student who wanted to become a diplomat found himself living in this
isolated city of 27,000 people. Set in a treeless landscape defined by barbed wire fences,
grazing cattle and a busy freight railroad line, Laramie is a town where pickup trucks
outnumber sport utility vehicles, where fall entertainment revolves around this
Saturday's homecoming football game and the start of the hunting season in the nearby
Medicine Bow mountains.
Although Wyoming often bills itself as the "equality state," in reference to its being the first state to give women the vote, the state legislature has repeatedly voted down hate crime legislation on the grounds that it would give homosexuals special rights.
"Wyoming is not
really gay friendly," Marv Johnson, executive director of the Wyoming chapter
of the American Civil Liberties Union, said from Cheyenne. "The best way to
characterize that is by a comment a legislator made a few years back, when he
likened
homosexuals to gay bulls as worthless and should be sent to the packing plant."
Shepard joined the campus gay association at the university within days. One of his favorite haunts was the Fireside Bar, which drew a mixed crowd of college students and rodeo cowboys, gays and straights.
"He definitely wasn't drunk when he came in," recalled the bartender, Matt Galloway. "He wasn't drunk when he went out."
Calvin Rerucha, the county attorney, charged in court documents today that McKinney and Henderson posed as homosexuals and lured Shepard out to McKinney's pickup truck just after midnight early Wednesday.
Beating him inside
the truck, the pair drove him one mile southeast to an isolated part of a new rural
subdivision, the County Attorney's report charged. There, it said, the men tied their
captive to a post-and-rail fence and pistol-whipped him with a .357 magnum "while he
begged for his life."
Relatives said that Shepard also suffered burns on his body.
After nearly beating the young man to death, Laramie Police Commander David O'Malley said, the assailants stole his wallet and shoes and left him tied to the fence.
The police commander said that when his officers arrested the two men on Thursday, they found in McKinney's pickup truck a .357 magnum pistol covered with blood and Shepard's shoes and credit card. He said they found Shepard's wallet at McKinney's home.
The police commander said that the two women helped the two men dump their bloody clothing, and that they reported hearing the men make anti-gay remarks. Ms. Pasley, a freshman art student at the university, lived with Henderson. Ms. Price lived with McKinney. The police did not say what the other three did for a living.
On Friday, friends and Laramie residents struggled to understand the incident.
Shepard, some said, may have felt a false sense of confidence because the local Gay Association completed plans on Tuesday night for "Gay Awareness Week 1998." The weeklong series of events starts here Sunday with a local observance of "National Coming Out Day" and a lecture on Monday by Leslea Newman, the author of "Heather Has Two Mommies," a book about lesbian families.
"If I were a homosexual in Laramie, I would hang low, very low," said Carla Brown, manager of the Fireside. "Openly gay behavior is not only discouraged, it's dangerous."
The parents ask that, in lieu of sending flowers, people contribute to a fund that was set up October 9 in Matthew’s name. Donations can be sent to:
Fund for the Benefit
of Matthew Shepard
c/o First National Bank
P.O. Box 578
Fort Collins, CO 80522
Account No. 1926083
Gay student clings to life after savage beating
In this story:
October 10, 1998
Laramie, Wyoming (AP) -- Alicia Alexander thinks she knows why a gay classmate at the University of Wyoming who begged for his life was savagely beaten and left tied to a wooden ranch fence to die in the cold.
"That has to do with the fact this is a cowboy place," said Alexander, a 20-year-old sophomore. "People aren't exposed to it. They're too close-minded."
Matthew Shepard, 22, remained in critical condition Friday night at a Fort Collins, Colorado, hospital. He was pistol-whipped, lashed to the fence and abandoned in near-freezing temperatures for 12 hours.
Police say robbery was a motive in the lynching-style attack, but Shepard also was singled out because he is gay. The suspects allegedly made anti-gay remarks after the attack.
Shepard, who told friends he had suffered other beatings recently that he attributed to his open homosexuality, was found Wednesday by two bicyclists who first thought he was a scarecrow or mannequin because of the way he was sprawled on the fence.
"He's a small person with a big heart, mind and soul that someone tried to beat out of him," said his uncle R.W. Eaton. "Right now, he's in God's hands."
Several national gay and lesbian groups said Wyoming's failure to adopt a law against hate crimes signaled that such depraved acts might not be aggressively prosecuted.
"More rural states are known for having a less tolerant, more aggressively hateful political structure and social structure," said Lester Olmstead-Rose, executive director of Community United Against Violence, a gay rights group in San Francisco. "If there's a feeling that you can get away with it, you might just try."
Cmdr. Dave O'Malley, a 25-year veteran of the Laramie police force, said there had been a few hate crimes over the years "but nothing anywhere near this."
Russell Arthur Henderson, 21, and Aaron James McKinney, 22, were charged Friday with attempted first-degree murder, kidnapping and aggravated robbery. They were ordered held on $100,000 cash bond.
Chastity Vera Pasley, a 20-year-old university student, was ordered held on $30,000 cash bond on accessory charges. Kristen Leann Price, 18, was expected to be charged as an accessory next week.
Police accused the two men of luring Shepard from a campus bar by telling him they were gay.
O'Malley said the three drove off in McKinney's truck late Tuesday or early Wednesday. He said the two beat Shepard in the truck, then beat him some more after tying him to the fence a mile outside Laramie, a city of 27,000 people about 50 miles west of Cheyenne, Wyoming's capital.
They took his wallet and black patent leather shoes, officials said.
"During the incident the victim was begging for his life," said Albany County Judge Robert A. Castor, reading an arrest affidavit.
He was left unconscious, his skull smashed by a handgun. He also appeared to have suffered burns, possibly from cigarettes, and had cuts on his head and face. The temperature dropped into the low 30s during the more than 12 hours Shepard was left outside.
O'Malley said the two men made anti-gay remarks to the two women, who told police about the crime.
Efforts to pass hate-crime legislation in Wyoming have failed repeatedly because critics have said it would give homosexuals special rights. In the past three years, Wyoming lawmakers also have unsuccessfully tried to pass legislation banning same-sex marriages.
"I am outraged and sickened by what appears to be a very heinous crime committed on Matthew Shepard," said Gov. Jim Geringer. "Hate crime legislation is needed."
Shepard's friends and family echoed the governor, saying they hoped the attack would galvanize support for new laws against crimes motivated by bigotry.
"It's really hard to be gay and live in Wyoming because of the good-ol'-boy network. It's such a conservative state," said Kete Blonigen, a college junior. "I'm almost afraid and half expecting someone to say, 'He was gay. What does it matter?' I can totally see that happening."