Stephen Jimenez

I read this book because after twenty years Matthew Shepard's ashes were recently moved by his parents from Wyoming and interred in the Episcopal National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.

The consensus of many people in Laramie and Denver was that Shepard was an HIV-positive methamphetamine user and dealer who gave and received sex for drugs and vice versa. That never came out at the trial.

The trials occurred in a carnival-like atmosphere complete with the requisite heavy press, security and carnival barkers. Shepard's parents seemed to have an inordinate hold on the prosecution and it seems likely if they had wanted the death penalty, the prosecutor would have asked for the death penalty. Russell Henderson, the lesser of the two defendants, was not afforded competent counsel and plead guilty without securing a reasonable plea bargain and is now serving two life sentences to be served consecutively, not concurrently. In return for not facing the death penalty he agreed not to do interviews with the press. The author interviewed him when he was transferred to a prison in Nevada. Suffice it to say, after that he was returned to a Wyoming prison.

The two main points in the book I came away with were:
1. The page in defendant Aaron McKinney's address book that would have had Shepard's name and number is missing.
2. The phone records of both McKinney and Shepard were never introduced or even requested at the trial. The author says that is unprecedented in a capital trial.

These points are enormously incriminating to the narrative that McKinney and Shepard did not know each other. The author collected many eyewitness statements that they were occasional sex partners and alternately rivals and collaborators in the Laramie methamphetamine market.

All this undercuts the White House and Justice Department fueled notion that Shepard was the victim of a homophobic hate crime. The resulting hysteria has created a miscarriage of justice.… (meer)

I'm having a hard time putting my thoughts together about this one. My heart and head say two different things - meaning that I both kinda-liked and simultaneously hated aspects of this read.

In just a second, I'll get into just whhhhhhyyy I felt that way BUT it needs to be said upfront that this is a story worthy of attention.It (repetitively) exposes the complex truth of the motivations and events that led to the death of Matthew Shepard, a young, gay man whose brutal death launched a nationwide campaign that led to the passing of hate crime legislation. His 1998 death triggered an uprising that was likened to the upheaval surrounding Civil Rights in the 1960s.

Me? I was 14 at the time. I think I remember watching something on MTV about him - a documentary, maybe the Laramie Project. Then, in college, as a theater-geek, I became acquainted to the play of the same name. Anyways, I don't remember much; it hadn't really penetrated through my junior high haze of self-scrutiny and introspection. What I do remember, pretty clearly, though, is that this murder was driven by Homophobia-with-a-capital-H. These good-ole country boy-strangers beat up and tortured a young, gay man because he may have come-on to them at a bar. Left him tied to a fence in the cold, spread out in the cold to suffer and die, literally crucified for being gay. Right?

WRONG. Well, kinda-wrong. See? The killers (well, the book makes a convincing case for me to say killer) knew Matt Shepard. They partied with him, traded drugs with him - and, on occasion, traded bodily fluids. Clean, Christ-like, college martyr Matthew had a problem with meth. Author Stephen Jimenez goes so far as to suggest that Matt, himself, was a drug runner/dealer who carried the meth across state lines. The kid behind the brunt of the assault against Matthew had a new baby, a girlfriend, and a raging meth addiction that may have caused him to result to "straight"-trade for his fix. In that sense, the crime is still related to homophobia - as the story that the killers later told (and the story that the media sold) was to cover up his own shameful actions/feelings about being "gay-for-pay." More than anything, though, the story is about the ways that loads of meth and just a hint of small-town corruption can ravage a community.

I liked the book for the ugly truth that it exposed, for encouraging a realistic portrait of an individual - something more than an average sinner but less a saint. I disliked a lot of different things. It was too long, too repetitive, too murky (many sources - and accused conspirators - were alluded to in anonymous terms). The author defended himself - and his motivations in writing the expose - far too much, coming across as both apologetic and self-congratulatory in turns. It was journalistic in the sense that "In Cold Blood" is journalistic; it was prejudicial and tainted with the author's own experience. In many ways, Jimenez became unable to separate his own subjective experience from that of the objective true crime tale.

Overall, the message this book imparts is important...BUT a magazine feature or series may have been more appropriate in terms of the length to subject matter ratio.… (meer)