The Book of Matt (19 page)

Without offering specifics, Lewis referred to some of Matthew’s difficult experiences “growing up … being sent to boarding school and having so many superficial people floating in and out … [It] was a recipe for the inevitable,” he said.

Over the next several months, despite living in the same trendy gay neighborhood of Capitol Hill, the two didn’t see each other. But then on December 15, Lewis wrote in his journal:

I saw Matt today. It was the most bizarre run-in. We came from opposite directions with the same agenda: to buy a bag of weed at Civic Center Park. A run-in which lasted for 3 hrs or so. It was nice walking down 16th Street, talking, laughing … I miss that friendship. But things are
different now. We live only a few blocks apart, but there is so much distance. I miss him.

With [Matt] I truly felt that my being was so vital. I never thought I could love … but I do. My attraction isn’t merely physical; he’s cute but that’s not it. That crooked face. His left ear lobe is attached, the right one isn’t. And he’s so damn skinny … but so cute. Damn! And those braces send shivers down my spine! This imperfect boy that I can’t seem to get enough of …

I wanted tonight to last forever; wanted things to be like they were in [North] Carolina. But it’s different now.

Two days after Matthew and Lewis bumped into each other in Denver’s Civic Center Park, Aaron McKinney burglarized the Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in Laramie with a couple of his friends. Afterward Aaron boarded a plane for Florida with Kristen Price’s twin brother, Kevin. Kristen, who was then seventeen and pregnant with Aaron’s child, would later say that shortly after he arrived in Florida he told her “he wanted to get his life together.” She also said he stopped using meth for a time “and was just smoking weed.”

Although Denver is about a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Laramie, Aaron was apparently well acquainted with the Mile High City by 1997. In addition to Duane Powers and Rob Surratt, the former bartenders who had seen Aaron at Mr. Bill’s bar, Matthew’s friend Ted Henson felt pretty certain that he had met Aaron the first time “around June … or the very beginning of July [1997]” while he was at a Denver bar with Matthew. Aaron had come to the bar with Doc, Ted said.

“Aaron introduced himself to me,” he recalled. “I know it was before the fishing rodeo in Gulfport, Mississippi, [because] Matt and I went to that in July of ’97” — some fifteen months before the Laramie attack.

Coincidentally, it was around that same time, in June 1997, that Kristen was introduced to Aaron by one of her girlfriends. Aaron was then living in a Laramie trailer with David Farris (Russell’s
half brother); nineteen-year-old Rod Becker (the stepson of Dennis Menefee, who would later be convicted in the rape and death of Russell’s mother); and two other friends, “Tex” and Cory — both of whom confirmed the extent of Aaron’s meth-related activities at the time and subsequently. Both men also stressed that they had gotten away from those activities a number of years ago.

While Matthew was living in Denver in 1997 and 1998, he struggled with addiction to a mix of prescription and street drugs and became increasingly worried about the amount of alcohol he was drinking. He had first used marijuana and cocaine in high school, but in Denver he was introduced to crystal meth and other hard drugs. He also got swept up in a fast lifestyle in the Capitol Hill area, much of it revolving around bars, dance clubs, and, according to several sources, all-male escort activity. But it was with a network of friends involved in the drug trade, a makeshift “family” of dealers — straight, gay, and bisexual — that Matthew cemented ties that would remain intact after his move to Laramie in the summer of 1998 to begin classes at the University of Wyoming. A couple of the dealers had grown up in Laramie and, like Matthew, traveled back and forth to Denver regularly.

It would not be until six years after his murder, however, that sources close to Matthew began to acknowledge on the record that he had been struggling desperately with drug entanglements in the days before his October 6 attack. His friend and fellow college student Tina Labrie described what was troubling him:

[Matt] was saying that … he just didn’t feel safe anymore … I thought he was kind of afraid … he was in danger … I could tell he was really worried about it … He said everywhere I move, it seems like I get sucked into the drug scene … He just said he left … Denver to come up to Laramie to get away from the drugs … he sounded really frustrated.

After Labrie’s revelation, I learned from other sources that in the year leading up to Matthew’s murder the Denver family with whom
he was associated was involved in trafficking methamphetamine between Colorado and Wyoming. Occasionally they handled other drugs, but meth was their main business.

A strategic distribution point along the route from Denver to Laramie was Fort Collins, Colorado, another scenic university town and the location of the Tornado dance club, which Matthew and several of his friends frequented. Two of his longtime male friends, Alex Trout and Ted Henson, have verified that crystal meth was becoming a big part of the Colorado club scene then — as well as the lives of all three young men.

Carl, a leader of the Denver dealing circle and someone to whom Matthew grew attached while living in the city, allegedly fled to Europe soon after the murder and hasn’t been heard from since. Friends said he was overcome with guilt for the things he’d introduced Matthew to, including heroin.

Two different male friends of Matthew, who were also from Laramie but not, to my knowledge, part of the Denver circle, spoke hesitantly about a party Matthew threw at his Laramie apartment early in the fall semester when both host and guests shot up heroin.

“Matty got hooked very fast” after he used heroin just a few times, I was told by Joan
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, a Denver woman who said she developed a “very close” friendship with Matthew in August 1997, more than a year before the murder. According to Joan, who worked part-time as a hairdresser, she always called him “Matty” and “treated him like a little brother.” He, in turn, looked up to her as “an older sister” and liked to play with her young son, who was handicapped. Months before Matthew moved to Laramie to attend college, they began meeting for meals on Sunday afternoons at El Conquistador, a Mexican restaurant in town. During those times when he was visiting Laramie, Matthew often stayed at the home of his friend Walt Boulden, a forty-five-year-old lecturer in social work at the university.

With an edge of remorse in her voice, Joan went on to say that the mysterious male friend who had given Matthew heroin “took him back down to Denver and made him get off it.” But she also confessed, “I think if it weren’t for us taking Matty to Laramie, if it
weren’t for us introducing him to meth, if it weren’t for the drugs — him being who he was … Matty would be alive today.”

(Since the 1990s, a growing number of meth addicts have turned to heroin in the belief that it will help them “come down” from the ruinous effects of long-term meth use. But the replacement of meth with heroin has also been the result of another development: As the government’s efforts to curb the availability of meth began to succeed, many addicts switched first to prescription drugs like Oxycontin, a synthetic opiate. Next they moved on to another opiate that was cheaper to buy: heroin.)

When I probed further into Doc O’Connor’s activities, several sources said he was an important figure on the fringes of the Denver family circle, but not a key player. They alleged that he ran an illegal escort service out of his limos, yet successfully concealed it beneath the facade of his legitimate business, “Doc’s Class Act Limousine Service.”

Two of Doc’s regular customers were Aaron McKinney and Matthew Shepard. Aaron began hiring Doc’s stretch limos in 1995 after he received a settlement of nearly a hundred thousand dollars for his mother’s wrongful death from a botched hysterectomy. Matthew, on the other hand, grew fond of limo rides while living in Denver, where “he had a couple of friends … who drove a limousine,” his friend Joan said. In the city’s Capitol Hill district, he also learned about gay escort services of the kind that proprietors like Doc allegedly offered to high-end customers.

According to other sources in Laramie, Doc negotiated for Aaron’s sexual services both locally and in Denver, took a cut of the action, and enjoyed a physical relationship with Aaron as part of the arrangement. Another piece of the bargain apparently allowed Aaron — as well as Matthew and others — to use the limos for transporting, peddling, and using drugs. But Aaron’s allegiance was to two or three Laramie suppliers — a different family, so to speak, from Matthew’s.

Meanwhile, Doc — much like politicians — could simply hide behind a veil of “plausible deniability.” Although he sometimes drove the limos himself, he has steadfastly maintained that he went out of his way to give his customers maximum privacy and “kept [his] eyes
and ears out of their business.” Often, however, he hired other chauffeurs to drive the vehicles and demanded that they, too, follow his procedures to the letter.

Marge Bridges, a former driver for Doc who chauffeured Matthew on several occasions, stated in a phone interview that she had also driven Matthew and Aaron together on a round trip from Laramie to Denver and back, well before the murder.

Doc has repeatedly denied Bridges’s allegation, yet acknowledges that she worked for him. For Doc to admit otherwise would place him in serious legal jeopardy if it could be proven that his limos were used to transport drugs across state lines — a federal offense. Another source, a former roofer who worked with Aaron and Russell, stated that Doc had personally informed him about the limo trip Aaron and Matthew took to Denver.

In addition, two former meth dealers who were part of the Denver circle and well acquainted with Doc elaborated further.

“Doc was top guy when it came to the cars,” one said, while the kingpin of their own group — “who taught Matt how to deal” — was “top dog” where dealing was concerned.

On a humid, late-summer night in 1998 — weeks before the October 6 attack — the aforementioned dealers and five other friends and acquaintances of Matthew connected to the Denver circle were drinking at Laramie’s Library bar, a popular hangout on Grand Avenue across from the University of Wyoming campus. The Library was one of several bars in town where Aaron McKinney, by his own admission to me, sold drugs covertly.

One of the Denver dealers brought a delivery of meth to the bar that night and, according to a pre-arranged plan, left it for Matthew in a parked car behind the building.

“Me and Duke
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went to the Library and dropped the stuff off at the vehicle and [Matt and Aaron] went outside [later] to smoke a bowl of meth,” the dealer recalled.

Matthew and Aaron’s encounter in the car, which was parked in a dimly lit area alongside an alley, lasted about forty minutes. Everyone in the group was surprised when Aaron stormed back into the bar
alone, “all pissed off at Matt.” The purpose of the meeting, two of Matthew’s friends said, was for Aaron to sample the product. But he apparently grew angry when Matthew rebuffed a business proposal he had made.

Dealer friends of Aaron said his usual modus operandi was to persuade suppliers to front him drugs with a promise to pay later, after he made some sales. In this instance, Matthew refused to advance Aaron any of the meth without cash up front.

“Matt used his brain,” a friend who was present at the Library explained. “He didn’t deal with people that only did twenties and thirties” (0.20 or 0.30 of a gram of meth).

With regard to Aaron, however, the same friend stated, “A lot of times if you get too many fronts, you get too much stuff, [then] you end up way behind. And if you still have a habit, then it will get pretty desperate … to get more drugs, to get more money.”

Aaron McKinney was addicted to methamphetamine for the better part of three years (1995 through 1998), and he was also known to dabble in crack and cocaine.

In 1998, the year Matthew was killed, a single kingpin whom many feared handled most of the cocaine sold in Laramie. The kingpin is now serving a long prison term with slim chances of parole, but to protect confidential sources he will not be named here. One source nonetheless confirmed that “Aaron worked for [the kingpin]” and recounted an instance when Aaron was driven in a stretch limousine to the kingpin’s home to make a pickup. Like many dealers’ homes, it bristled with surveillance devices.

While there was occasional overlap and even cooperation in the business activities of rival families — and a few members of each group had long-standing friendships — there was also stiff competition around selling meth and cocaine in local bars. The most lucrative sites for quick, clandestine sales were the Library, the Buckhorn, the Fireside, the Ranger, the Cowboy Saloon & Dance Hall, and a newly revamped place called Club Retro. According to numerous bar employees and patrons, as well as friends of Aaron and Matthew, each man regularly visited all of these bars, with the exception of the
Cowboy, where Matthew seldom went. A different member of the Denver circle was responsible for moving product there.

Among Aaron’s friends who used and dealt meth, most of them in their twenties, the bulk of supply that passed through their hands came from California. Usually it was transported via “the Western route” — through Nevada, Utah, and across I-80 to Laramie and other destinations to the east. On occasion the meth they purchased came from Casper, Wyoming, a transshipment point about 150 miles northeast of Laramie. But in Matthew’s circle the flow of drugs ordinarily came from Denver and sometimes points farther south – Pueblo, Colorado; border towns and cities like El Paso, Texas; and ultimately Mexico.

Some in the Denver circle were not only involved in transporting and selling meth but also acquired the precursor chemicals to manufacture it. But at the time of Matthew’s murder and during the prosecutions of Aaron and Russell that followed, their names never surfaced in official investigations, at least in documents that were released publicly. A few of the dealers managed to evade apprehension for their interstate trafficking activities until three or more years after Matthew was killed. By then the drug underpinnings of the murder had long since been covered up, often with the help of an unwitting and credulous media, replaced by a politically expedient version of the murder and the motives behind it.