The Book of Matt (38 page)

According to Ronnie Gustafson, who briefly dated Matthew in Laramie, Alex Trout had introduced him to Matthew but had also cautioned him to “be careful” if they became sexually involved, as Matthew was HIV-positive. Doc O’Connor also later acknowledged, “Matt told me he had AIDS.” In his early interviews with the media, however, Doc had never broached the subject.

Whether or not Aaron learned prior to the attack that Matthew was HIV-positive will, in all likelihood, never be known. (Doc said he kept Matthew’s confidence about this until months after the murder.) But in retrospect, it’s easy to understand why the Clinton administration feared that more violence could erupt in Laramie. Since Aaron was instantly depicted in the media as a homophobic “redneck” — his friend Travis Brin, then thirty-four, told a reporter, “One time [Aaron] said we ought to get all these people with AIDS, stick them in an airplane and blow it up” — the idea that he could’ve exploded in rage after realizing he’d been exposed didn’t seem far-fetched.

It’s also not inconceivable that Aaron and Matthew might’ve had unprotected sex.

According to Russell, however, he “never heard any mention of AIDS” on the night of the crime. Nor did a single patron or employee of the Fireside Lounge notice any kind of animosity as the three men left the bar.

Nevertheless, in the fifteen years since Matthew’s murder, several reliable studies have found that users of crystal meth engage more frequently in unprotected sex than non-users do. Studies have also linked meth addiction in the gay community to higher rates of HIV transmission.

In February 2005, more than six years after the murder, journalist Andrew Sullivan posted the following on his website, under the heading “Meth Is the Issue”:

The real problem in the gay male epidemic right now is the use of crystal meth (it is hurting the health of people already HIV-positive just as much as it is contributing to the infections of people who are HIV-negative). This drug has rampaged and is coursing through straight rural America and parts of gay urban America. As many of you know, I’m a libertarian when it comes to recreational drug use (and what consenting adults do in private). But I draw the line at this drug. It’s evil, potent beyond belief, it’s destroying people’s minds, careers, lives and souls. If we don’t get a grip on it, it may undo all the progress we have made against HIV in the gay world … We should start insisting on zero tolerance of this drug among our friends and loved ones. We should do this … out of love and concern for one another. We should encourage every addict to get treatment … We have risen to the occasion before and we can do so again. Not by stigmatizing, blaming or ostracizing, but by confronting, persuading, begging one another to overcome this menace.

At 10
AM
on Friday, October 16 — a cold, snowy morning — a funeral service for Matthew was held at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in the Shepards’ hometown of Casper, Wyoming.

Cal had been advised by federal officials not to attend the funeral, due to security concerns. As another precaution, armed SWAT teams were deployed on nearby rooftops to monitor a small band of angry demonstrators and to quell threats of violence. But perhaps most ominously, Matthew’s father wore a bulletproof vest when he came outside to address the media.

Inside the church, law enforcement agents had combed the pews searching for explosives before an overflow crowd of mourners was allowed inside.

In a park across the street from St. Mark’s, a notorious preacher from Kansas, the Reverend Fred Phelps, marched with members of his congregation, chanting venomous slogans like “No Tears for
Queers” and “No Fags in Heaven.” Phelps, a defrocked Baptist whose website address was
godhatesfags.com
, had come to the funeral not only to protest but also to celebrate Matthew’s death.

“We want to inject a little sanity and gospel truth into what’s shaping up to be an orgy of homosexual propaganda,” he said.

In Phelps’s ideal world, civil law would be based on biblical code, and the government would execute homosexuals.

To many, Reverend Phelps — with his hateful ranting and oversized cowboy hat — came across as a pathetic caricature. Yet the previous weekend in Fort Collins, while Matthew was still alive on a respirator, a group of college students from Colorado State mocked Matthew’s suffering in a homecoming parade. For laughs, they decorated a float with a scarecrow and the words “Up My Ass,” then paraded it a few blocks from Poudre Valley Hospital where Matthew lay dying.

As if the trauma of Matthew’s murder and all that followed weren’t enough pain for the Shepard family, Dennis’s uncle suffered a fatal heart attack in the kitchen at St. Mark’s Church while waiting for the funeral service to begin. Then, within less than a month’s time, Dennis’s father — Matthew’s grandfather — would also die suddenly.

“The stress of losing Matt would also cost me my father,” Dennis later recalled.

About two weeks after the attack, Cal finally received a clear directive from US Attorney Freudenthal to proceed with prosecuting the case under Wyoming state law, which had no hate crime provisions. Freudenthal also relayed once more the Clinton administration’s promise to help with the case in any way they could. (Although President Barack Obama signed the Matthew Shepard Act into federal law in 2009, Wyoming legislators have yet to amend the state’s laws to include hate crimes.)

However, it could later be argued that the Clinton administration’s pledge of assistance was more symbolic than actually fulfilled. When news of Matthew’s beating first made headlines, federal officials signaled that they would play a central role in the case and would be there to offer whatever support was needed. But thirteen
months later when the trials were over, Albany County, Wyoming, would be left to foot the bill. The county’s financial deficit would also result in the elimination of several deputies’ jobs in the sheriff’s office. It was an ironic outcome, given that a prominent feature of the hate crime bill pushed by the Clinton administration was more police enforcement.

At times, the federal government’s behind-the-scenes coaching of Cal bordered on the ridiculous.

“Always wear a blue shirt, otherwise you’ll look like a corpse,” he was advised, courtesy of Attorney General Janet Reno.

Another pearl of wisdom from the feds was, “Don’t let the media lights shine on your bald head.”

Lastly, he was instructed, “Don’t beat up on a public defender again.” Apparently, word of Cal’s sometimes-steamy temper had made the rounds all the way to Washington.

Soon Cal began to receive death threats. Anonymous callers to his home in the middle of the night warned that they would take justice into their own hands if they had to. On one occasion a drive-by shooter fired a bullet through his living room window, but luckily no one was hurt.

The FBI quickly stepped in with special security measures to protect the Rerucha family. Cal’s wife, Jan, and their two sons, Luke and Max, were forced to curb their usual daily activities. The boys were no longer allowed to ride their school bus and were under constant surveillance. Cal had to restrict his movements to just a few places: the courthouse, the gym, church, and home.

His conduct as a prosecutor was also being watched carefully, not only in Wyoming but in Washington as well. Early in the case, he and Rob DeBree realized that unidentified federal agents were looking over their shoulder, keeping track of every move they made. Both the US attorney’s office in Wyoming and the FBI also kept abreast of the latest developments in the case.

Cal’s decision to seek the death penalty for Aaron and Russell didn’t come until he’d consulted at length with Matthew’s parents. It was
his first death penalty case — and “not a decision I took lightly,” he said. Instead he would find himself wrestling with his conscience every step of the way.

For advice and guidance he turned to the same seasoned defense attorney who had once been Wyatt Skaggs’s boss — Leonard Munker. Munker cautioned him about the heavy emotional toll of a death penalty case and told him to read Norman Mailer’s epic book
The Executioner’s Song
, about the Gary Gilmore case in the 1970s. (Gilmore was executed by firing squad in Utah in 1977, after a ten-year moratorium on executions in the United States.)

To keep his personal motives in check, Cal also made frequent visits to his parish church of St. Laurence O’Toole for confession, often several times a week. He struggled to adhere to “my duty as a prosecutor but not to thoughts of revenge,” he later explained.

An intensely moral man and a lifelong Catholic, Cal felt his higher duty was to the law he had sworn to uphold and to ensure that justice was done. But by his own reckoning, he also struggled constantly with the less noble urge to exact revenge for Matthew’s killing. Succumbing to vengeance was a sin, he believed, and a temptation to be monitored vigilantly.

At the same time, Cal’s conflicts were compounded by his personal ambivalence regarding capital punishment, and the equally difficult question of whether the death penalty was morally compatible with Catholic doctrine.

As he pondered the atrocious violence inflicted on Matthew, he also had to contend with the knowledge that Aaron and Russell were not strangers to him, or to the courthouse. Aaron, who belonged to the parish of St. Laurence as well, had committed a string of earlier offenses, both as a juvenile and as an adult. Aaron had also been “known to abuse animals for the fun of it,” according to Cal.

Nonetheless, Cal had to ask himself whether he — and others — had failed to intervene sufficiently, before Aaron’s antisocial behavior could turn more violent.

Cal also remembered that when he was growing up in Laramie in the 1960s, the McKinneys “had been a solid family in town.” Aaron’s relatives had run a popular restaurant called the Diamond Horseshoe,
which was always packed with diners on Sundays after church — including the Reruchas.

But Russell’s story and Aaron’s were very different, Cal said, “though both young men came from broken homes.”

Asked if he’d been surprised when he heard it was Aaron and Russell who were involved in the attack on Matthew, Cal replied, “I wasn’t surprised with Mr. McKinney. I was
very surprised
with Russell Henderson” (emphasis in original).

Cal elaborated on what he saw as fundamental character differences:

[It] seemed like [Russell] had turned around his life and then … [he] met the wrong people. And went the wrong direction … [I’d been] very aware of his situation and the progress that he was making …

[His grandparents] did an excellent job in raising him. And giving him that start. It’s a sad ending to what could have been a good story …

[Aaron] was a different individual … From the time that he was in school … he was violent. Physically violent. Almost a person without a conscience … Everybody in law enforcement knew Mr. McKinney because of his involvement with [the police] from the time that he was in junior high school … He liked to brag about killing other people. He liked to intimidate individuals. He would fly into rages … And he wouldn’t hesitate to use a weapon.

… McKinney certainly was the leader [in the attack on Matthew]. He was a person that you’d fear, I think. Just because of the way he acted …

I don’t think there’s any doubt that the blows most probably were struck — especially the fatal blows — by McKinney with that .357 Magnum … Certainly McKinney was the person that was the more violent of the two … [He] was more culpable [as far as] the brutality …

With these individuals I believe Henderson more than I believe McKinney … Henderson [is] more credible …

During the same interview with Cal Rerucha — nearly six years after the murder — he also had more to say about the role of drugs:

… A lot of people didn’t realize the devastating effects of methamphetamine. The addictive qualities … What it does to you … Just takes hold of you and takes away your soul … And [McKinney] was deeply involved in it, buying it, selling it, using it … You’re not thinking about how you can help the family, you’re thinking about how you can score your next big adventure …

When you’re into meth, nothing else matters … Relationships ares econdary …

Methamphetamine was a huge part of this case. And … in some ways, the media really hadn’t paid enough attention to that.

Methamphetamine is not a one-time thing, it’s a way of life. And once you get involved in this, then everything changes … It was huge in the lives of all those people around [McKinney] … [He] was a violent person. Not just [to] Matthew Shepard or people he came into contact [with] in the drug world, but also to girlfriends and people that he associated with …

When you cast a play in Hell — and methamphetamine is Hell —you’re not going to get angels for actors …

THIRTY

ACDC

Not long after Kristen Price had poured out her heart and soul to Detective Ben Fritzen — confessing everything that Aaron and Russell had allegedly told her about the crime, and acknowledging her own efforts to help cover it up — she continued to pledge her love to Aaron.

“Babe, I love you so much and I still want to marry you no matter what,” she wrote to Aaron in a letter smuggled to him at the Albany County Detention Center (“ACDC”), where they were both jailed. “We can’t have contact visits when you get to prison if we’re not married. Just promise me you won’t say anything to my mom about our second baby. I need to tell her in my own way …”

Other letters that Kristen wrote him were flattering — and sometimes sexually explicit.

“I saw you on TV, babe, you looked really good,” she said.

On a different occasion, she referred to the prospect of Aaron showing off his genitals at the jail.

“I can’t believe you was [sic] going to show everybody your dick,” she complained in a sassy tone.

In the meantime Aaron stoked his sudden criminal celebrity by signing jailhouse autographs “Killer.” He also bragged in a letter to a fellow inmate’s wife, “Being a verry [sic] drunk homofobick [sic] I flipped out and began to pistol whip the fag with my gun.”