Original subtitles

A University of Wyoming student

was out riding his mountain bike

and he falls down,

looks up,

sees what he thinks is a scarecrow

or a prank, just because of Halloween

just around the corner, which, of course,

this was early October,

and goes over to investigate,

and, of course, was horrified by what he found.

I can still see the description of him,

the biker who found him

and thought he was a scarecrow...

of the deer,

that was keeping him company all night,

and when he was found,

the deer got up and ran away.

There's just a...

A feeling of divinity around him.

There's a feeling of an angelic presence.

This is a child who was loved and adored,

and in every way, kind of, the boy next door.

This is a sign of rage, something very personal,

something very terrifying about that.

How cold he had to have been tied to that fence

and not found for 18 hours,

and still be alive.

They then took him to Ivinson Memorial Hospital,

which is the local Laramie hospital

to try and see what they could possibly do.

It was a mystery to the officers,

okay, "Who is this person?

Who is Matthew Shepard?"

"Hey, Mom, I'm writing to say hello.

How is everything?

I've been okay, kinda homesick.

Having trouble with getting into the swing of things,

but it won't last long, I hope.

I've been real depressed and I think it's let-down.

I came back and the weather was crummy,

and I miss home.

Miss you.

Love, Matt."

Matthew Wayne Shepard was born on December 1st, 1976.

And even though he was a little guy,

he had a huge personality.

Matthew was a very emotional kid, very empathetic.

My name is Jim Osborn,

and I was a friend of Matthew Shepard.

The first thing that I noticed about Matt

is his smile.

He just had this incredible beaming smile.

My name is Romaine Patterson,

and I was friends with Matthew Shepard.

Oh, I loved his laugh.

I loved his smile more.

He had a great smile.

It beamed.

He was young.

Looked like a sweet innocent guy.

Just looked like a nice kid.

It wasn't just his mouth.

His eyes would kinda light up

and twinkle or sparkle at you,

and it was like his whole body smiled at you.

Wyoming is like a sleepy little town.

The whole state is one sleep little town.

We're the least populated state in the union.

We're sort of our own little galaxy here.

We are geographically enormous.

We're the 10th largest state in the country,

but we have the smallest population.

In 1998, even though we're watching Will and Grace,

we are the most conservative state in America.

Growing up in the '70s and '80s,

you couldn't be different.

It was a kind of place where,

if you were a stereotypical cowboy,

working on an oil rig, you'd fit in.

But it wasn't like growing up in New York City

or any of the major cities in the country.

Unfortunately, the word "faggot"

was sort of a go-to

whether or not that had anything to do

with your sexuality or not, that was just a word

that was used to describe you as like a loser

or you as a different.

I am from Nebraska,

and I graduated in high school in 1987.

Even though we were...

You know, Matthew and I lived in very different cities

but it seemed like he was a kid that I very easily

would have been friends with, could have friends with.

He seemed like somebody a lot of us knew.

He seemed like your friend in high school

that probably was gay.

There's no denying

that Matthew was gay and he knew that.

Like, if you looked at Matthew,

you saw a gay man.

There was not a...

There was not even an ounce of straight there.

In 1993, as Matthew was finishing

his sophomore year of high school,

his dad got a job with an oil company

in Saudi Arabia.

As Matthew's family began to move to Saudi Arabia,

Matthew settled on an American school in Switzerland.

So, in the second semester of his senior year,

he went with some friends to Morocco.

Morocco at the time, wasn't perhaps

the tourist destination that it is today

and it wasn't known for being particularly safe.

My understanding of what happened in Morocco

was that on one particular evening,

Matthew wanted to go out and see things.

He didn't think, "Oh, I should go out

with a group of people in a place that I'm unfamiliar with."

He just decided, "I'm gonna go out.

I'm gonna leave the hotel.

I'm gonna wander around. I'm gonna look at the shops."

Things like that. That's something he totally would have done.

And while he was out, he was snatched.

In Morocco, a couple of men took Matthew

to a isolated place and raped him.

At that time, the idea that a young gay guy

is raped by a group of adult men,

people couldn't even fathom that kind of stuff.

And so, Matthew came back to the hotel,

you know, immediately told people.

His parents were contacted,

the police were notified

but they never found the attackers.

It was a random attack.

They had no idea who did it.

After the attack, Matthew changed.

He wasn't himself.

I think what happened is he lost his sense

of safety in the world.

Being assaulted is a traumatizing experience.

Trauma has deep, lasting impacts

on someone's development,

their social development, their emotional development,

their spiritual development,

and people who experienced trauma

are at risk of feeling suicidal,

having poor mental health like depression and anxiety.

In 1995, Matthew graduated from high school,

returned to the US,

and he decided to come out to his mom.

I definitely think that Matt felt comfortable

in his skin and was comfortable being out.

By the early '90s,

you have good things happening in the cultural world,

with more representation with gay people.

How many lawyers did you go to before you called me?

Nine.

You're trying to get rid of her because she's gay.

I hadn't really come to terms with my sexuality until like 1984, '95.

And then, yes,

Ellen DeGeneres is a thing.

I'm gay.

In the late '90s, there was a great kind of boom for gay people.

There was more representation on television.

Ellen had come out.

People fell in love with Jack on Will and Grace,

an overtly, outwardly gay character.

A question of sexual orientation?

The doctor is in.

I think middle America was becoming more comfortable,

you know, with the thought that there are gay people

out there and that they are just regular people.

And I think that gave Matthew the sense of security

that he wasn't alone and that he was in fact safe.

Matthew later bounced around

to a few different places.

He eventually wound up back in Casper, Wyoming,

his hometown.

I went to my first year of college

at Casper College in Casper, Wyoming.

I got to know one of the instructors on campus.

She called me one day and she said,

"I got this weird call today from a therapist.

And he's got a client, and he would like to introduce his client

to other young gay people.

Can I send him your way?"

And I said, "Okay. Sure. Why not?"

And it's this awkward young man named Matthew.

He's like, "I'm trying to meet some new people

here in Casper who are gay too,"

and he was super cute, but we took him under our wing

and we were like, "Listen, you're one of us now."

I think depression was a real issue for Matthew.

I think he was a manic depressive

so sometimes he was super, super high

and things were awesome.

"February 23, 1998.

I put the Cherry Creek to shame tonight.

Walked around in my humble cute self.

It was fun.

I've really gained a lot of comfort here."

And then, there were times were things

were literally the opposite,

where it could not had been lower for him.

"It's been a long time since I've journaled,

but I understand why now.

I'm so depressed."

I think Matthew really did try to address

the personal traumas that he had endured.

He dealt with them the best that he could,

where he didn't feel bad about himself,

he didn't blame himself for the things

that had happened in Morocco.

And he was always, you know,

trying to find that happy balance.

"I'm gonna call home tonight and say hello to my mom and dad.

I miss my family so much.

They're so important to me.

I wish that I could see them more often."

That spring, Matthew announced that he was going

to move to Laramie, Wyoming,

and in May he made that move.

He enrolled at the University of Wyoming,

which is where his parents had gone to school.

Mathew was pretty happy in Laramie.

Within the red state, this college town

was sort of a liberal enclave, so while he was there,

he met like-minded people,

he was connecting with friends,

and that's also where he met Jim Osborn.

I'd see him almost every single day

in front of the Union, and there he was,

usually people-watching,

always with his hair just so

and polished look about him,

you know, just always making sure

that anyone he talked to, he was very focused on them

and was very present in that conversation.

He always seemed to be very confident

and was definitely outgoing and personable.

I never doubted "This kid is gonna make a difference."

So, Tuesday night,

Matt came to the LGBTA Meeting.

We'd been kinda putting the final plans

on all of the events for Gay Awareness Week.

And then, as we did most weeks after the meeting,

we all agreed, let's go out for,

you know, dinner and something to drink after.

And so we did that.

And after we'd been there for a while at Village Inn,

he said, "Okay. Well, I'm, I'm not heading home yet."

And we later learned that he ended up

at the Fireside.

I can only imagine that Matthew felt

perfectly safe walking into the Fireside Lounge.

It's a place he'd been before.

He knew the bartender.

He had no reason to be looking over his shoulder

and thinking someone was gonna do him harm.

The Fireside was not a gay bar,

but certainly a bar where gay people

did go from time to time

because we didn't have a designated gay bar

in the state.

Most of us had a bar or two that we could go out to

and feel relatively safe.

I had been to the Fireside.

It was nothing special.

Matt says he saw Matthew Shepard

leave the bar with two men.

Although he didn't see their faces on the way out,

he's confident that those two men

were the same who were paying with coins for their pitchers,

because he didn't see those guys around after that.

Shortly after midnight

in a neighborhood just north of town,

a resident wakes up and hears a hissing sound.

So he goes outside to investigate.

What he finds is that his tire has been slashed.

He calls the police. That's around 12:40 a.m.,

and lets them know he thinks someone has slashed his tire.

At that time, the officer was about four blocks

from the house where the tires were slashed,

he sees two guys behaving kinda strangely

in this black Ford pickup truck.

And they're sitting there and they aren't moving.

It's well past midnight,

there aren't many people out and about.

He's out looking for people

who just slashed somebody's tire.

And so he shines a light on them,

announces it's police.

He thought they could have been the suspects

in the tire slashing.

Russell Henderson was somebody

who came from a family

that had been in Laramie a long time.

By all accounts, was a pretty good kid

up until late teens.

He was an Eagle Scout.

He was raised by his grandmother.

His mother had some issues.

While he was living with his grandmother,

he was dating a University of Wyoming student

named Chastity Paisley.

And there's blood on him.

So the officer asks Henderson,

what happened to your left?

He tells the officer a pretty confusing story.

Russell says that they got jumped by two men

who he describes as a White guy and a Hispanic guy,

and that they'd been beaten up pretty badly by them.

Russell said that the other two guys,

the White guy and the Hispanic guy had run off.

So, he's asked, "Okay, well who were you with?

Because we think you're involved in some of this vandalism

that we've heard about in the area."

It seems Russell is telling the police officer

that he was not involved in the tire slashing.

He won't name anyone's names, including the guy

who the officer just saw run away.

Russell was hesitating to tell the officer

who the truck belonged to.

And finally he says, "Well, I was with Aaron McKinney."

Aaron McKinney was a young man

who had grown up in Laramie.

His parents were divorced.

Anderson met Aaron McKinney at some point

and they were roofers together.

Aaron McKinney was dating someone named Kristen Price,

and the two of them had recently had a baby together.

Aaron's mother had died a few years earlier,

actually from complications from a hysterectomy.

And that actually led to him inheriting quite a bit of money

due to a life insurance policy,

and unfortunately,

he used a lot of that money on drugs

and poor behavior.

In the early '90s, crystal meth

arrived in Wyoming in a big way.

For someone like Aaron McKinney,

who thought of himself as a bad boy to start with

and had money in his pocket to burn,

it's not so surprising that he wound up

becoming one of the army of people

who became addicted to meth.

So the officer continues talking

to Russell Henderson and he says,

Aaron McKinney got cracked

with a stick or something when they got jumped.

And Russell Henderson,

he's got a gash in his lip

and there's blood on him.

So, the officer also broadcasts out

the descriptions of the men who Russell

told him about, this white guy

and Hispanic guy who supposedly jumped them.

Right now everyone thinks that those two men

could be responsible not just for vandalizing the tire,

but also for attacking Russell and Aaron,

both of whom were pretty badly injured.

And so after they finished their conversation,

Henderson goes in an ambulance

to Ivinson Memorial Hospital.

The officer takes a look at the truck...

and he sees a lot of things outside of the truck that looked odd.

There's this really bloody gun.

What is all this stuff? What has happened here?

And they're just absolutely baffled by what took place here.

Initially, they think it's just this one fight

in a residential area,

but there's more to this and they know it.

So they're processing outside of the truck,

they're swabbing blood.

And of course, this gun in the bed of the truck is available to them,

so they take it,

and it's just covered with blood.

Under federal law, there is an exception

to the rule that you need a search warrant,

which is called the plain view doctrine.

If an officer sees a potential piece of evidence

in plain sight, they're allowed to take that evidence,

preserve that evidence,

in the event that a crime has been committed.

And then, they look in the cab

and they see this really nice pair of shoes,

which seem out of place,

because they don't seem like the kind

that these guys would have.

So, what's interesting is you have

some Laramie Police Department people

listening in to the radio call.

When Deputy Fluty, the Albany County

Sheriff's Deputy calls from the fence and said,

"We've got the student ID

with the name of Matthew Shepard,"

the ears of some police detectives perk up.

Right around this time,

police are still looking for Aaron McKinney.

They go to his house... He's not there.

Eventually, Kristen Price,

who was Aaron McKinney's girlfriend,

called police and said Aaron was badly beaten up,

and so now he's at the hospital.

Aaron was injured pretty badly from the assault

the night before between the White guy

and the Hispanic guy,

and he had to be transferred from the local hospital

to Poudre Valley to have his head injury treated.

Police were invited by Kristen Price

to come and interview him.

They do talk to him briefly

a little bit and asked him about the incident.

So, they started asking McKinney about the truck

and he said, "Oh, well, that was stolen from us

when we were out last night."

And he said he had been jumped by a couple of folks

and he got cracked in the head.

While officers are interviewing Aaron McKinney

at the hospital, they received word

that Matthew has been found on the outskirts of town

and is being brought into that same hospital.

When the doctors there see him,

they are doing what they can to try and revive him.

The hospital contacted his parents,

who were still in Saudi Arabia.

They started the process of getting home

as quickly as they could.

They realized right away,

"We can't take care of him here."

So there's a hospital in Fort Collins

called Poudre Valley Hospital

that handles head injuries.

So, they realized right away,

"We gotta get him to that hospital."

The first time I learned about what had happened to Matt,

I got an email from a mutual friend of ours,

the same friend that had introduced us.

And she let me know that Matt had been attacked

and that he was in the hospital.

She let me know that his prognosis

was not good.

There was a shock, there was a fear.

There was just this distraught feeling you had

because you knew there was nothing you could do.

And so I just kind of waited it out.

The first few hours were honestly pretty scary

for myself and most of the members of the group,

because we didn't know who had done this.

For me, it was unmistakable

that this had to be about hate.

So, law enforcement now starts to interview people of interest

about Matthew's attack.

Police bring Russell,

Chastity Paisley, who was Russell's girlfriend,

and Kristen into the station

and try and do interviews with them.

Russell Henderson isn't speaking, so he's...

"Lawyering up" is the term they use,

he's gonna wait for an attorney.

Chastity Paisley explains that,

"Oh, well, I really don't know anything."

Kristen Price had a little one at that time

and she had no interest in getting arrested

or having anything happen to her.

And he told her,

"I think I killed somebody tonight."

He explained that he and Russell Henderson

were at the Fireside bar

where they saw somebody that was gay

and he looked like he had money.

Kristen tells him,

they came up with a plan that they would pretend

that they're gay and they'll try

and get him to go with them

and that they will rob him.

And eventually, he decided to go with them

and they left the Fireside bar.

After Aaron tells her what happened,

he goes into the bathroom to get cleaned up.

She looks in and sees him washing off a bloody wallet.

Aaron then took that wallet, put it in a dirty diaper

and threw it in the trash.

Kristen says that Chastity and Russell

come over and they discussed the evening's events,

realized they better get rid of some of their evidence,

better get rid of their clothes.

The clothing they did not get rid of

was Russell's shoes,

which were very expensive

and he had just bought them,

and they hid those in a shed at another location.

Law enforcement goes to the location

and after a little bit of a search,

they find the shoes that were covered with blood.

They go to the McKinney household

where they find his clothes,

they're bloody, and then in the dirty diaper they find the wallet

that's got the driver's license

of Matthew Shepard in it.

By the end of the afternoon,

all three were arrested

in connection with what happened to Matthew Shepard.

At the time, I was the news director

at Wyoming Public Radio.

I was also teaching that semester

at the University of Wyoming.

I had a student that was in my class

and he called me up that morning

and told me that he wasn't gonna be able to come to class that day

because something bad had happened to a friend of his.

And I'm like, "Are you kidding me?"

Like what happened?

He goes, "Oh, you're gonna hear about this.

This is a real terrible thing.

It's going to be a news story for you."

Matthew Shepard...

Matthew Shepard...

Matthew Shepard...

Matthew Shepard...

You know, in public radio,

we don't have the scanner on like TV stations do

or newspapers might.

We don't do a lot of that day-to-day crime stuff.

But I did have somebody that morning tell me,

"Wow, the scanner was really going last night."

There was something going on.

There's something that happened just outside of town.

So, I called the sheriff's office

and they wouldn't say anything, but they said,

"We're gonna have a news conference at 3:00."

That afternoon, we were there.

Of course, there may have been

one other radio station there,

and then I remember that some local TV stations

and some television stations from Denver were there.

During the press conference, Sheriff Gary Puls

remarked for the first time about Matthew's attack.

He also announced the charges against Russell Henderson,

Kristen Price and Chastity Paisley.

Aaron McKinney had not been charged as of yet,

but they told us that we know where he is

and we are going to be charging him shortly.

The sheriff made it very clear to us

that he thought that this incident happened

because Matthew Shepard was gay.

In 1998, the Wyoming legislature

is mostly retired ranchers,

you know, old White men.

We didn't have hate crime legislation.

Passing any hate crimes legislation

would be like putting a stamp of approval

and saying "This is true,

this is who we are."

And it was just an obstacle that they couldn't overcome.

From that point on,

I never ever, ever, ever heard a member of law enforcement

call it a hate crime.

This was a local crime.

It didn't strike me that this was something

the national news would be interested in.

Aaron McKinney also had been transferred

to Poudre Valley Hospital in Colorado

as well as Matthew Shepard.

Police waited for him to be released,

and as soon as he was released,

he agreed to be extradited back to Wyoming.

Well, he basically said,

"Yeah, it happened and...

But here's what happened."

They're kinda driving around and then they sort of go to the Fireside.

And they are really short of cash.

And they're using quarters,

nickels and dimes to buy a pitcher of beer,

when they see this other person approach them.

And they concoct this plan where they're gay

and they'll try and get him to go with them.

They leave the bar and get in the truck,

which is Aaron's father's truck.

Matthew is positioned in between them in the seat,

sandwiched in between them, really, and Russell's driving.

He was holding a gun at that time,

'cause they were, you know, telling him he was gonna be robbed,

and then Aaron took his wallet.

Aaron has his gun out.

It just doesn't make sense that Matthew

would feel emboldened to make a pass at him.

Aaron McKinney just started hitting him with a gun.

He hit him in the face.

He just whacked him.

He explained that Russell drove them to the site,

and then Russell tied him up.

And then Aaron just started to hit him...

And hit him and hit him.

I'm sure he was terrified.

I imagine you would be confused also,

how could a scenario of just leaving the bar

with someone escalate so quickly to this.

Really went from a situation

where it sounded like what they were intending to do was rob the young man,

and just like that, it turned into something really catastrophic.

Aaron basically just unleashed on Matthew.

He beat him brutally and repeatedly.

Aaron admitted he just kinda went into a rage.

He just started hitting him and hitting him and hitting him.

And then Aaron took his shoes.

Aaron tells the police after he was done

beating Matthew, he assumed Matthew was dead.

He and Russell jumped back in the truck,

drove back into town,

potentially to get rid of the gun,

and got in a fight.

There is something of an ironic parallel

in the fact that Aaron

had just finished brutally beating someone

and came into town

and then got his own head cracked open.

The thing in that interview that comes across

is he was actually sort of nonchalant.

And after the interview was done,

he was charged with attempted first degree murder,

kidnapping, and with aggravated robbery.

An openly gay college student beaten and left to die

clings to life in Wyoming this morning.

I know that virtually no one in Laramie

or in the state of Wyoming had any idea

the media storm that was about to descend on them,

or what a chord Matthew's story would strike

at that particular moment in history.

Matthew Shepard.

Matthew Shepard.

Matthew Shepard.

Matthew Shepard.

In the hours after Matthew was found,

people learned Matthew Shepard's name.

He became a national news story.

It was a gruesome discovery at this fence,

a gay man barely alive tonight

in a coma, brain damaged.

It was everywhere.

It was in every newspaper. It was on the news.

Everyone's kind of like just watching and listening

and hoping that he would live.

Not in my wildest dreams would I expect

that the New York Times and Newsweek,

and CBS, ABC, NBC,

CNN, all those people would be showing up

in my community within roughly 24 hours.

I'd never seen that before.

A couple of things were going on

in the hours after Matthew was found.

There were many people who wanted Matthew's story known,

because these murders had been going on for a long time.

Matthew's friends and activists were reaching out

to an existing infrastructure of gay rights,

national organizations

that then could amplify what happened.

The National Gay and Lesbian Organization

descended into Laramie, in particular,

GLAD, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance against Defamation.

Like, they're literally a media watchdog group.

This is what they do. All they do at that time

was watch the media and contact different members of the media

about the stories and the reporting that they're doing.

The only way change was gonna happen was to also use the media

to amplify the story of what happened to Matthew.

People aren't stupid. They're sophisticated about the media.

People were calling the Campus Activity Center

and leaving messages for me,

Good Morning America and Dateline.

The hate and violence must stop.

It was kind of a scary and unique challenge

all of a sudden to be asked to be the spokesperson

for all gay people in Wyoming

is the way it felt at the time.

My name is Nate Mickelson.

I grew up in Kemmerer, Wyoming.

It was pretty small,

maybe about 3,000 people.

You know, I thought I was the only gay person,

but I was part of that community

and people cared for me no matter what was going on.

I was at college. And when I heard about what happened to Matt,

it really shocked me.

You know, it wasn't a kind of Wyoming that I remembered.

You know, it let me know that I wasn't as safe as I thought I had been.

And I wasn't as safe

growing up as I thought I had been.

Welcome my buddy, Ellen DeGeneres.

I was on my TV show.

It was an incredibly turbulent time

in my life and world.

I remember the James Byrd situation,

the same horror and hypocrisy

and evil and systemic racism

that allows a Black man to be lynched

and feeling something has to be done,

not knowing what to do.

And then right on the heels of that,

Matthew Shepard and feeling that same horror.

I first heard about Matthew Shepard

in my dorm room in New York,

and there weren't a ton of details.

Even though this happened thousands of miles from where we were,

I think we all recognized

pieces of ourselves in this story.

In '98, I was in San Diego, California.

I was in high school.

You know, I was still in the closet.

And, you know, hearing about this awful,

brutal crime was terrifying.

It made me fearful

to step toward coming out.

It made me more fearful

to embrace who I was

because it reminded me how much hate there is out there.

I spent a lot of time trying to convince

my mother in Nebraska

that everything is still gonna be okay

and that I could be safe

and would be safe when in reality,

I knew...

that that might not always be the case.

It was terrifying. It was...

It was a terrifying realization.

While all of this is going on,

Matthew is still in the hospital.

His parents are there and they're just hoping

that he's going to survive.

We all watched what was happening with Matthew

in the hospital and those days

while he was trying to survive

and we knew the likelihood of that.

And yet everybody hoped, right?

You know, people were critical of the community.

Well, you know, the Wild West,

you're probably pulling gay people off the street

left and right and beating them,

or this kind of thing probably happens in Laramie all the time.

There was a real generalization

about where Matthew was from

and that maybe it wasn't surprising

that a gay kid would have this...

horrible crime happen to him

in a rural area like that.

That everyone from Wyoming was anti-LGBTQ,

that we were all just a bunch

of uneducated hicks who went around engaging

in gay bashing or words to that effect.

I think Wyoming will always struggle

with outsiders' perception of us,

like, it was taught in our schools.

It was preached from our pulpits,

but it's not unique to Wyoming.

People love to tell you

"It would never happen in this great blue state that I live in."

And they're full of.

It was homecoming weekend for the University of Wyoming.

And so normally, that's festive, right?

And they were wearing yellow arm bands, you know,

saying that hate is not a Laramie value.

And it was just comforting to see that.

And that you could see the same message

on the marquee out in front of the mom and pop hotels

and Arby's national chain restaurants

were putting signs up like that, too.

I cannot begin to describe

the difference that that made

as a queer person in this town,

knowing that there really were more people

who had our back

and had Matt's back.

People were rooting for him.

There were people who were praying for him to live.

Like, it became this, "Can this underdog make it?"

- Ready? - Yup.

At 12:00 midnight

on October 12th, 1998,

Matthew Shepard's blood pressure began to drop.

His condition continued to deteriorate.

And at 12:53 a.m. this morning,

Matthew Shepard died.

Matthew's mother said to me,

"Please tell everybody who's listening to go home.

Give your kids a hug.

And don't let a day go by

without telling them that you love them."

Even though it was something that for me,

I had had kind of known was coming,

it still was...

that letdown, that...

That air escaping your lungs in a way

that you can't control.

That...

That last vain hope

that well, gosh, maybe he'll wake up was gone.

I broke.

I literally broke.

All of a sudden, all of that grief

and anger and sadness just rushed in

and completely overtook me.

I was very devastated

by Matthew's death

and didn't quite know what to do.

My soul ate at human's ability

to be cruel to another.

Hearing about his death and processing it

was even scarier because there wasn't anybody

for me to relate to about it.

I didn't have anybody to talk to about it.

I just heard about it and I thought...

"This is the world that I'm about to enter

as an adult." And that scared me.

My boyfriend has two kids

and his daughter asked me what I was doing today.

And I explained that I was going to do this documentary.

And she asked me what it was about and I said,

"Well, it's about a boy named Matthew Shepard who died."

And she said, "Why did he die?"

And I said, "Well, 'cause he was gay."

And that was all I could think to say about it

to a 10-year-old.

After Matthew's death was announced,

there was such an outpouring

across the country with candlelight vigils

in major cities and small towns.

I was astonished by the outpouring of emotion.

It broke everybody's heart.

And I think finally people were starting to feel that,

that no matter who you are, no matter what you identify as,

no matter who you love,

no one deserves to be treated that way.

Matt's death was a rallying point.

People were angry,

viscerally angry about what was happening.

Let us commit ourselves to transforming the anger

of this march into sustained action.

Let's move tonight.

Let's move the country tonight.

Yeah.

I am so... pissed off.

I can't stop crying.

Here is an example. This young kid minding his own business

gets murdered for no other reason than he was gay.

It was so sensational. The story was so strong.

And it was so clear what had happened

that you couldn't deny it any further.

The determination we have

will not diminish.

We still have a long way to go

in our nation to make sure

that hatred and intolerance

are banished from our country.

It was astonishing.

The only time I can recall before that

where there was that kind of outpouring of emotion and rage

was when Harvey Milk was assassinated in 1978.

We must do more

to deal with violent bigotry.

Even though Matthew had died

from an anti-gay hate crime,

most of us were pretty naive

about what anti-gay hate looked like.

- He's the one that said he was a fag. I didn't. - Yeah.

When we found out that this guy,

Fred Phelps, from the Westboro Baptist Church

was coming to the funeral,

it struck us as very odd.

Like, why would someone come protest at a funeral?

I had never heard of Fred Phelps before.

Fred Phelps coined the catchphrase,

"God hates fags," and was just known

for some really vulgar and awful anti-gay rhetoric.

It was just like how much more horrific

could a group of people become?

This seems like the right time

to target this family,

ruining this event that should've been

a very somber, very respectful day.

It's really shocking.

Have you ever been to a fag parade?

We didn't force a fag...

Him and his family are holding up these signs

like "Matt in hell"

and "AIDS kills fags"

and just like horrible, hateful crap, right?

You'll go to hell.

You'll go to hell just like Matthew Shepard

for the hell he did before he died.

Romaine and I knew that we had to respond to that.

We knew that it was probable that Phelps

and his group would come back at some point.

We felt that it was important for us

to send a message

that we don't agree with that.

That sort of thing is not welcome here.

We knew we had to block them out.

We wanted to block out Fred Phelps and all their horrible signs

so that Judy and Dennis would never have

to look at their ugly faces.

I had a plan.

In the in-between period

between Matthew's memorial service

and then what was supposed to be a hearing,

really, for Russell Henderson,

the world was crazy.

Those of us who were actively

still doing interviews,

we talked to Matthew's parents

and asked what they wanted us to say

because that was important. You know, we wanted to make sure

we were doing right, not only by Matthew, but by Judy and Dennis.

We never stopped. It never stopped.

There was definitely, you know, significant work

happening with law enforcement

and the court case, you know, the county attorney's office.

A lot of motions clarified in that time

that this was going to be a death penalty case.

They had to separate the two cases,

so they weren't gonna be tried together.

About a week prior to Russell Henderson's trial,

Jim Osborn calls me and he says,

"Fred Phelps is coming to Laramie for the trials."

And I said, "Great."

The issue and turn the country over

to these militant sodomites.

The whole exterior of the courthouse

was surrounded by media people.

There had to have been like ten or fifteen

satellite trucks, hundreds of reporters.

It was madness.

And they're all focused in on Fred Phelps

and his horrible anti-gay crap.

In any nation that agrees that it's okay to be gay

will go the way of ancient Sodom.

And then all of a sudden, this band of angels

comes walking down the street and they're like,

"What the hell is this?"

And like the parting of the Red Sea,

they all make way.

Yes.

And we surround Fred Phelps,

we turn our backs to him, and now we're angels.

We didn't wanna let that kind of hatred

and bigotry come into our community unchallenged.

And it worked very well.

Fred Phelps can no longer talk to people.

He can no longer yell at people.

So, they just started singing hymnals.

And now there's angels with floaty wings,

listening to, you know, beautiful hymns

and it was serene and surreal and just wild.

Russell Henderson's public defender, Wyatt Skaggs,

had a number of death penalty cases

and he really didn't want anything to go to trial.

And he saw the evidence. He knew what they had.

Really worked tirelessly, since this case began

with one goal in mind.

And that was to save Russell's life.

Judge Donnell just said this was a horrific murder.

When you look at all the facts in the case,

there's just no way he should be out in public.

And he gave him, you know, the consecutive sentences.

And so he's in for life.

Chasity Pasley, who was Russell's girlfriend,

got sentenced to about a year and a half in prison.

Aaron McKinney's girlfriend, Kristen Price,

ended up not ever serving any time,

other than her initial arrest time that she had

and just kind of moved on with her life.

With those three out of the way, it became the trial.

Aaron McKinney, he was facing the death penalty.

And that was the main event

that everyone had been waiting for.

There was a couple of things still at play

that this was just a robbery gone bad

and this had nothing to do with hate crimes.

But this was a hate crime, no doubt about it.

But one of the things that the defense did

is they used the gay panic defense

that none of this would've happened

if Matthew Shepard didn't reach at his groin

and touch him there, and that caused him to snap.

Gay panic defense is meant to say

that someone's gay or queer or trans identity

is reason enough to harm them,

that that is something violent and threatening

and is legally permissible

to take violent action towards them.

It wasn't the first time.

There have been a number of occasions in the past

and about 30% of the cases where this defense was used,

people got a reduced sentence.

And one of the things that the defense also did

is they used the fact that Aaron McKinney

was a victim of sexual abuse as a child.

They need to explain that he's got some

very raw emotions about this,

and if somebody is making a move on him,

that's gonna trigger some things

and lead to this beating, lead to this attack.

There were plenty of people who believed

that Matthew Shepard as a gay man

got what he deserved.

I really do think that the McKinney crowd

thought that that would work,

and I was bracing for it.

Soon as the gay panic defense came up,

the prosecutor objected.

Well, I think that is a defense

that is atrocious, that should not be used

in any situation,

in any court in these United States.

It gives people the excuse

to hurt or to kill another person.

The ruling comes as a relief

to those who support Shepard's family

and those who support gay issues.

Even if Matthew made a pass at Aaron McKinney,

all he had to say was, "No, thank you,"

which is what women have had to say over and over again

because men make unwanted passes.

He didn't have to beat him to death

with the butt of a gun.

It's a pathetic defense.

The gay panic defense

is the perfect articulation

of how profoundly we blamed the victims

of homophobic and transphobic crime.

Jury found Aaron McKinney guilty

of two counts of murder

plus aggravated robbery and kidnapping.

The verdicts came after just 10 hours of deliberation.

And then we were all gearing up for what we expected to be

a pretty good death penalty discussion.

And then out of nowhere, it was announced that

that's not what was gonna happen.

After being approached by defense attorneys,

the Shepards recommended McKinney be given life

rather than death in memory of their son.

In an emotional address to the court,

Dennis Shepard told McKinney,

"You robbed me of something very precious.

Mr. McKinney, I give you life

in the memory of one who no longer lives.

May you have a long life

and may you thank Matthew every day for it."

I was so moved by his words and his compassion

and his ability to forgive.

And I thought, this is the dawning of something new.

After Matthew's death, there was so much organizing

and so much forward momentum

and so many public demands for legislation

for hate crimes.

Very quickly, the President took up this cause.

And I think that in part, that's because the country

was ready to have the conversation.

Hate crimes laws had been proposed

in Congress multiple times and failed multiple times.

This was not something that had never been discussed before.

The Hate Crimes Prevention Act would be important

substantively and symbolically

to send a message to ourselves and to the world

that we are going into the 21st century

determined to preach and to practice what is right.

It also wasn't surprising to me that ultimately

that legislation died in committee

because they weren't so quick

to pick up the ball and run with it.

I think the Matthew Shepard Foundation

is one of the really important things

to come out of Matthew's death.

There is no excuse for what happened to Matthew

and something needs to be done to curb

this hatred that seems to be permeating society.

Which ultimately, becomes this incredible mission

of erasing hate through legislation.

We're gonna go ahead and get started.

Down this dirt road,

Byrd was murdered early Sunday morning.

The killers left a trail of blood

and the trail of evidence as they drove along this road.

The combination of the horrific racism

of James Byrd's death and the homophobia

in Matthew's, I think are forever linked.

They're forever linked emotionally and morally.

They're evils of the... Of the same pile,

you know, and that they're linked together as we all,

you know, move forward for equality in this country.

This is an issue we couldn't let go by.

I have a window of opportunity here

that I wanna take advantage of.

All of a sudden,

this tremendous responsibility fell upon her.

She doesn't like crowds,

she doesn't like being in front of people,

and yet despite all of that,

she continued to do it day after day.

When I think about

how she responded to it,

if you don't have respect for that woman,

you don't even know the meaning of the work.

Today's hearing is a very important one

and focuses on the serious problem of hate crimes.

Think of the incidence of recent violent crimes

that are motivated by hate and bigotry

and how they've seared the conscience of this country.

And so people were like, "Let's talk about this.

Let's talk about it right now, because if we don't,

this is gonna continue to happen and we cannot afford that."

It took society, I think, a while to understand

what it is to protect minorities in this country

who don't often have a voice socially or politically,

and who get demonized and treated as less than.

The fact that this legislation exists

highlights these crimes

as something other than just a murder.

These are committed specifically

because the individual committing the crime

hates that person

because of who they are, fundamentally.

We were just asking to not be murdered.

It is the most modest of requests.

Hate crimes have no place in America.

In 2007, a version of the Matthew Shepard

Hate Crimes Act was reintroduced to the Senate.

It passed the house...

On this bill, the yays are 237.

The nays are 180.

The bill is passed.

It was attached to the Defense Authorization Act.

President Bush said he would veto

the Defense Authorization Act, however,

if this Hate Crimes Act was attached to it.

So ultimately it was removed

from the Defense Authorization Act

and it died on the floor.

If you track the trajectory

of the hate crimes being introduced,

there's something really instructive

about what our movement, right?

Like advocating for the full

dignity and health of LGBTQ people,

what we learned in the process,

once we sort of coalesced around like the love

is love message that helped progress us.

And it haunts me to this day,

to think about how many times

she has bared her soul and her pain

for the benefit of others.

How many hearts she has changed.

How many minds she has expanded.

Thank you so much and welcome to the White House.

You know, as a nation, we've come far

on the journey towards a more perfect union,

and today we've taken another step forward.

This afternoon I signed into law

the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr.

Hate Crimes Prevention Act.

It took 11 years from Matthew's murder

to get hate crimes legislation signed,

that seemed quick to me for legislation

covering something that's as potentially controversial

as protecting gay people and others

from hate crimes.

I was shocked

and, uh...

And moved to tears then and again now.

There is something

so important about knowing

that your government, my government cares about me.

What that started to set up was awareness

for equal rights legislation.

And it started something.

It started the country taking this seriously

and trying to protect us as members of the country.

What happened to Matthew Shepard

was a key turning point.

The legislation that was passed ultimately

because of his murder is very important

for our community.

I think a lot of us thought that it was over,

that we didn't have to fight anymore,

that we were accepted.

We were so wrong on so many levels.

The years following the signing of federal hate crimes legislation

felt like an almost golden age.

We were starting to feel like we're actually gonna live

in a country that welcomes us.

We were in a great place.

There was not really a worry or a concern

when we woke up in the morning about, you know,

having to put on extra armor or the shield, right?

I mean, we felt freer.

It created this feeling of momentum

and this feeling of like, we finally figured out

as a country how to like,

make people feel included

and to like celebrate difference.

This morning, I am proud

to sign a law that will bring an end

to Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

And in 2015 when the Supreme Court

ruled on marriage equality,

and then same-sex marriage

was legal across the land.

The ban on gay adoption was, you know, dropped.

And so all of a sudden, our whole family structure,

which had been illegal in this country

and in this state, was now a thing of the past.

So we were legally married in the state of Florida.

We could now legally adopt children

in the state of Florida.

This wonderful glow of being, you know, new dads.

-I loved every minute of it. -Yeah. It was...

It was amazing.

Um, it was amazing.

It was a step in the right direction.

It was a step in acceptance.

And I let my guard down thinking that

things are only gonna get better.

And I've lived long enough to see

multiple... waves

of progress and backlash.

Should have seen it coming, and I didn't.

Election night,

the election night of 2016,

I am devastated because I don't know

what this means for my family.

I remember people that were supporting

of the then president,

"Oh, they're not... Nothing's gonna change."

-Mmm-hmm. -They're not gonna...

They're not gonna touch

any LGBTQ rights.

And I'm like, "You're naive."

I, Donald John Trump, do solemnly swear.

I knew this was a potentially very dark time ahead.

The furies had been unleashed.

Trump! Trump! Trump!

With a backlash

that I couldn't have imagined.

They are worthy of death.

These people should be put to death.

2016 began with the bathroom bill

that was North Carolina's legislation

to prevent trans-students from using the bathroom

that aligned with their gender identity.

My name is Erin Reed. I use she/her pronouns.

I'm a queer legislative researcher

and activist, and a content creator.

Those of us who are active in the LGBTQ community

and in LGBTQ rights

had a lot of fear that our rights would be curtailed.

And those fears came to fruition relatively quickly.

The purpose of our school system

is to educate kids, not to indoctrinate our kids.

Correct!

My name is Zander Moricz.

I knew about Matthew Shepard,

but I don't know if that narrative is as widely

acknowledged as I would like it to be

because these stories are essential

to share and reflect on.

I was raised in Sarasota, Florida,

which is a pretty politically polarized community,

and I found sanctuary in my school community.

I came out to a civics teacher at Pine View,

who was then my PE teacher actually.

It was a safe space. It was exactly

what a school is meant to be.

It's a place to learn

and discover not only things in subjects but yourself.

That environment

that is so accepting, that is so affirming,

is a threat to the politicians

and they need a solution for that.

And the solution is, "Okay, it's all happening

in these safe spaces. We'll take them away."

And the Don't Say Gay law was an example of that.

No sexual instruction

in grades pre-K through three.

And so how many parents

want their kindergartners to have transgenderism

or something injected into classroom instruction?

When this was first introduced as a bill,

our boys were in first grade.

The bill is supposed to impact kids' kindergarten through third grade.

So, this was bringing it home directly for us.

The Don't Say Gay bill is now law.

Governor Ron DeSantis Monday signed the measure

banning certain instruction about sexual orientation

and gender identity in the classroom.

One of the things that makes this piece of legislation

so horrifying is the way that it's enforced.

The enforcement mechanism is that any parent

can sue a school district.

Opposition to the bill grew louder in recent days.

For a public school teacher in Florida

to get in trouble for having maybe a photo

of their spouse on their desk.

We can't even take a risk. Imagine what the consequence would be.

What's going on? We are like going completely backwards.

Although Ron DeSantis said that it was intended

to protect only the youngest children from,

you know, being indoctrinated into homosexuality,

the law's been expanded to apply to kids

in grades K through 12.

-The amount of silence... -Mmm-hmm.

...was deafening.

We are still seeing hateful attacks

like the attack on Matthew and what that signifies to us

is not that there hasn't been any progress,

but that that hate still exists.

And that's like the enemy of equality.

In Texas, the governor had a directive

to prevent trans-youth

from accessing transgender affirming medical care.

The governor's directive was to investigate

some Texas parents of transgender children

for potential child abuse,

specifically parents who provided gender

affirming care that stops puberty.

Those bills do harm.

They create bullying for transgender youth.

Transgender youth deserve to be protected and safe.

You don't hear anything like that from Governor Abbott, right?

Like, you hear the reverse.

You hear this dehumanization

of kids from Governor Abbott.

And somehow from 2016 to now

that has become normalized.

All this is going to do

is force a lot of us back into hiding.

What can they do? They can hide.

That's about all there is left.

Or they can fight.

And neither one of those options feels good,

but that's what's left.

I mean, hide or fight, you know?

Matthew Shepard's death was horrific,

but it's also this violence is commonplace.

We're so grateful that you're with us here

as we cover a mass casualty shooting

in downtown Orlando.

Physical violence like the massacre

at Pulse nightclub in Florida,

or the mass shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs,

that teaches our queer youth

and queer people in general to be terrified,

that based on their identity alone they can be slaughtered.

The sad fact is that people are always going to hate.

And no matter what we do,

we keep coming back to the same horrible places.

But we can't not fight.

We have to continue to fight.

And that means being visible when you can

to your family, to your friends, to your community.

The people who are part of that,

you know, movable middle, who are your neighbors,

who just need to hear a different message,

invite them in, have that conversation.

On the other side, like conservative folks,

you're gonna have to find your moral courage.

Like history is gonna look back

on what you did and did not do during this time.

And I think they're going to judge you harshly

for how rapidly you capitulated your values.

Matthew's story is really important

because it was one of the reasons why

we were able to move forward in the past 25 years.

But the need in this moment when it's hard

to get motivated to fight all over again,

to remember who this young man was,

who was so brutally murdered because he was gay.

- Move! - You're a bigot and you're a coward!

And that is why Matthew's story

continues to be told.

And we do have to keep sharing Matthew's story.

We have to teach gay history.

It's very important

that we continue to focus on young people.

Young people are the future.

We have a lot of brave teens like Zander doing the things he does,

and it's encouraging.

What happened to Matthew Shepard

is undeniably wicked

and disgusting and full of hate

that's happening again every single day.

But there's nothing stopping us

from revolutionizing our society

in a generation. We absolutely could.

We just have to start right now.

Now!