Next Stephen Jimenez argues the killing of Matthew Shepard in laramie wyoming in october of 1998 was not an hate crime but instead the result of a drugrelated robbery gone wrong. This is a little over two hours. Let me tell you how we came to be here tonight. As most of you are aware, i was an assistant principal at Virginia High School and was in the Laramie School systems for 30 years and so i saw a lot of stuff from my position and here in november a friend of mine palled around and erma said glenn have you seen a new book out on Matthew Shepard and as i am sure that a number of you are, its hey thats old news. Why do we want to drag that up . She said no, this i think is worthy of your reading it. Irma let me have the book and i didnt put it down for two days because i lived it and i mean this is the way i saw it as i was going through the schools and working with these young people. And you know i dont want to change anything. I dont want you to look at this in any other way. It was a tragedy that took place back then and in no way am i trying to change that. But i think if we have the opportunity to look at it, you know through another persons eyes. I have told stephen if given the opportunity i would have liked to have written this book because one of the nice things about my job is probably 99 of the kids that went through the Junior High School came back and you know i dont want to say we are the odds that they will tell me anything at this point and laugh about it, hey do you remember this and you remember that . I have had a number of them come back and we will talk about stuff like drugs ,com,com ma alcohol use and stuff that was going on at the Junior High School in the high school and in the community. I had a number of them that i knew that were involved in the drugs and the drug culture they came back to me and said wow you know that was not what it seemed to be. There were drugs in that situation and its one of those things as a laramie boy, i was born and raised here. I went to school in my seventh grade year i was in this building. We had seventh grade through 12th grade here. We are talking 1959, im aging myself. 1959, 7312 and then they went on to high school and the first graduating class in high school was the 1960 61 class so than the next year we ended up having this great big doling to ourselves and so laramie born and raised and when i read this book you know it just started kind of a burden that hey i need to do more about this and i actually, we are living in loveland and im trying to find the right property to live here in laramie and to get back. So i was up here working with gary one of my friends here and we were looking at some property that we are working on. I got a call from my wife staying hey Stephen Jimenez who wrote the book is going to be doing a reading reading of that book in fort collins. I said goodbye real quick and went down there just in time for steve to come out and do his reading. As i sat there, in that audience and just relating it again. By the way some of you i dont know if you remember it diane smith who was principal, where was diane principal . Linford, thank you. I stand corrected. Anyway diane was fair and afterwards we talked a little bit and i went up and introduced myself to see ben and i said hey i would really like to spend some more time with you in talking about this. I said why are you doing this in laramie and he said i have not an invited. So i said hey consider yourself invited. I will try to get us together and i guess where i am with this is im not wanting, im not telling you what to think very at im asking you to read the book and want to read the book make up your own mind. See what the reason is and by no means are we trying do you know know these young people that committed this you know i dont want to change anything. I mean it was a tragedy but dont we want to deal with the truth and that was kind of the way it i was looking at it so over the course of the last two to three months we have put this together and there are a number of us doing this, not just me so here we are tonight and i would like, i want this to be educational. Number one. I wanted to be informative because i think you know there is a lot to be learned here and if you have some questions like i did please, we have the mic here. We welcome and in fact we want your input. So with no further ado here im going to turn this over to ray and ray as i said was a radio announcer and doing a lot of stuff there and he was right in the middle of this. Thank you. I remember the morning after the attack and it looked like it was going to be another crime. It looked like there were a series of killings by the number of other people who had been murdered so we were kind of getting used to going and visiting cal rerucha at the al bunny courthouse so what struck me as kind of insane really within a very short time and theres a chapter in a book called wildfire that steve talks about, about how the narrative of this incident quickly went wild and the way the National Media ascended upon this town and i thought unfairly characterized the citizens. There were a lot of stories that i think people who live here when they read them in the papers and when they saw them being reported on television ace just shook their head and said no, thats not this town. Just an anecdote for that. We were sitting in the courthouse between the Court Proceedings. It was early on in all of this and i was sitting next to a couple of network reporters. They knew each other. They were talking back and forth and basically speculating on what the next part of the process was going to be. What do you think is going to happen . Well i dont know what you think is going to happen . This went on back and forth in an hour later i went back to the Radio Station and a together newscast. We had a television on there and i was watching the television. One of the reporters was doing a live standup and he said sources inside the Albany County courthouse or speculating the next move in this process is going to be and then he started relating the story he was talking with the other fellow. And technically the story was correct. There was a source inside the Albany County courthouse but in the age of 24hour news you have got to fill time and that is essentially what they were doing. I have a couple of questions i would like to ask steve about that, but about why the media refuses to let go of a narrative once they have established it. And so it was an interesting front row seat i guess if you will to see how this process works. Im reading from the book jacket here about steve and when this book came out i had seen some initial press reports on the internet and ran over to barnes noble and pick it up and they still have not yet unpacked the boxes. I asked the lady to look it up and she found it. She said just a second we have it in the backroom. She went and found it for me so i ended up getting it. Stephen gammon is that is an awardwinning journalist and producer. He was a Norman Mailer nonfiction fellow and is written and produced programs for abc news 2020 and rather reports nova fox court tv and others. His accolades include the western guild of american award, im sorry, ive got to put my eyeballs on here. Mongers an award for investigative reporting, an enemy and fellowships at the across foundation and wyoming. A graduate of Georgetown University he has taught screenwriting and new york universities to school. He lives in new york and santa fe. Steve thanks for putting on a parka and coming out and visiting us this evening. [applause] thank you, thank you good evening and its really a pleasure to be here in laramie again because i just went on a very long and wild journey that i never expect good would happen. What i would like to do first, and going to read a couple of excerpts from the book, short experts excerpts bits first i would like to tell you how i came to the story. Obviously when this crime happened i was as horrified by everyone around the country about the brutality, the horrible violence that was committed but it really wasnt at the time of the crime that i decided to come to laramie. It was a little more than a year later at the time Aaron Mckinney the principle perpetrator here was convicted and i was back east. I read the statement that Dennis Shepard, matthews father made in court at the time Aaron Mckinney was convicted and it was such a heartfelt statement in which he really bared his soul and there were satellite trucks outside and need yet everywhere. At that moment Dennis Shepard really wrote his soul and said things like you know, why wasnt i a better father and a friend to matt . Why wasnt i there when he needed me the most and how will i ever get an answer to those questions now . When i read that statement there was something about it thats i think spoke to fathers and sons everywhere, others and daughters everywhere. I think it spoke to families, families of all kinds who have gone through tragedy. So it was really that kind of the story of what this family had been through because it was so clear that it was something that would e. With his family forever that i decided to come to laramie. I came to laramie the first timo this month in february of 2000 i came here to research a screenplay for a made for Television Film because i would have felt that the story deserved a full length treatment, a twohour treatment on television but i came to educate myself. The entire record in the case had recently been unsealed as many of you who live in laramie know. The record was sealed by the court for a year. Witnesses had been under gag order and not just witnesses but principles involved in the case, people who worked in the courthouscourthous e, defense lawyers, Law Enforcement. So i was very interested in going through that public but i came here to write this story of the antigay hate crime as it had been presented by the National Media. I am a gay man. I have been out since the 1970s and it had seemed to me that this was an important story to understand to look at an fulllength form. I know those of you who live here are very familiar with what that narrative was at the time. I can just say that eventually i went through some changes in my thinking about the case but i just want to refresh our collective memory here about how this was reported initially. From the very first trip warts of the october 19, the october 6, 1998 attack major news organizations provided a generally uniform account of the crime and motives behind it. A sampling of newspaper and magazine stories painted a harrowing picture. This is first from the boston globe. Shepard, 22, a firstyear student at the university of wyoming paid nearly allegedly for trusting to strangers enough at the fireside lounge to tell them he was gay. What followed was an atrocity that forced the Stunt Community of laramie to painfully confront the festering of antigay hatred as the nation and its lawmakers watched. This is the denver post. Police investigators turned up the following sequence of alleged events. Sometime tuesday night shepard meant henderson and mckinney at the fireside lounge. Shepard told them he was gay. They invited him to leave with them. All three got into mckinneys fathers pickup and the attack again. Newsweek, hungry for cash perhaps riled by shepards trust in the mission that he was gay they drove to the edge of town police say pistol whipped him until his skull collapsed and then left him tied like a fallen scarecrow or a savior to the bottom of a crosshatched fence. That was newsweek. Albany county sheriffs and this is the washington post. Albany county sheriff gary polls who suggested that the beating was being investigated as a hate crime said the investigation is aggressively continuing. Laramie Police Commander dave omalley told the Associated Press that while robbery was the main motive shepard was targeted because he was gay. This is time magazine. What people mean when they say Matthew Shepards murder was a lynching is that he was killed to make a point so he was stretched along the wyoming fence not just as a dying young man but as a signpost. When push comes to shove it sayn mind for gays. And finally the New York Times. While some gay leaders saw crucifixion imagery in mr. Shepards death, others saw a different symbolism. The old west practice of nailing a dead coyote to a ranch fence as a warning to future intruders. So that was, i kind of begin the book there and that i think is pretty true to the way the case was presented in the National Media. This crime happened on tuesday october 6. Within just a few days i think it was pretty widely believed that this was an antigay hate crime. Matthew was taken to a hospital in fort collins and died in the Early Morning hours of october 12. By the time matthew had died, the president of the United States know clinton had made statements urging passage of a hate crime bill that was stalled in congress. Let me just say a tiny bit about the context. The attack on Matthew Shepard happened just four months after the dragging death of james bird junior in jasper texas so there was a hate crime bill that was stalled in congress at the time this attack on matthew happened here in laramie. I will go back to my arrival here. I arrived in the courthouse and asked to look at documents and you know reams of paper and egg files came out and i started to go through those records and take notes during this first trip. I was fortunate that day cal rerucha was Walking Around the county Attorneys Office and i had recognized him because i had seen them in the news stories and i just approached them and i said would you talk with me for a few minutes about the case . He agreed and i went into his office and we spoke that first day for about 45 minutes. It was very clear that he was sizing up my intentions not just them but in the months that followed. He told me he wanted nothing to do with anything that would inflict any further pain on Matthew Shepards family. And i basically said to him would you help educate me about the case . I wasnt here during the trials and any Court Proceedings and would you steer me in the right direction as far as documents and he agreed to do that. I took a lot of notes that first trip. I returned east end i began a series of interviews with him by phone and then i returned to laramie and i continued not just with cal were rerucha but i began to talk with other people and Law Enforcement and began to talk with other people in laramie. Although cal rerucha didnt say this i kept hearing from other people in town there was more to this case. Its not as it appeared to be. I had one person Law Enforcement say to me the homicide had nothing to do with his sexual preference and so my curiosity was aroused. Eight months into my research i finished a first draft of the screenplay that was largely based on the official record and i came back to laramie. I wanted cal rerucha to read the script but i wanted to get any documents that i hadnt copied to take with me but i thought it was going to be my final research trip. I was going through some folders at the courthouse and i came upon a letter. It was an anonymous letter but it was there the courthouse and essentially what the letter said was that Aaron Mckinneys offense was false and is has said that Aaron Mckinney was familiar with gay guys, with gay bars, that he was comfortable being around gay guys and it implied that some of this had to do with receiving money and other favors that darren had received money and other favors for his contact with gay guys. It names someone here in laramie as one of Aaron Mckinneys gay friends. And so after eight months of working on the screenplay i was in a quandary and i ultimately decided to put the screenplay aside and to begin to look at the case as a journalist. While my experience wasnt as a journalist i was documentary filmmaker filmmaker who had done longform stories in several stories dealing with crime and law and justice. So we fully but the screenplay aside and i began doing some investigation of my own. I would say i did quite a bit of that for about a year. When i had gathered enough information i took the story to the New York Times magazine and that pitch it to them and based on what i brought them they commissioned me to write an article for the sunday times magazine. I worked on that story on and off. I was doing a couple of other things but i worked on it over period of two years. This was from 2002 until early 2004. And in 2004 the story was killed at the New York Times magazine they did not criticize the reporting. They actually said the reporting was really good and we would like to work with you on Something Else but the suggestion was that they really didnt want to go into some of the darker aspects of the story. As luck would have it, i was talking at the same time to abc news 20 20 because i had hoped that maybe i could do the times magazine story and do this for television but when the times magazine killed at that forget it. Nbc news will never do this but what in fact happened is that abc news based on the material that was in the article at the times magazine killed abc news said lets do this. They put their resources on the network behind me and i worked on that story with a producing partner for six months solid and that piece aired in november of 2004. So that